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THE 



FIRE OF GOD'S ANGER 



OR, 



LIGHT FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT UPON THE 
NEW TESTAMENT TEACHING CONCERN- 
ING FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 



By L. C. BAKER, 

"A Minor of "Mystery of Creation and of Man;" Editor of Words of Reconciliation. 



u For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the 
lowest hell" — Deut. xxxii. 22. 






PUBLISHED AT OFFICE OF "WORDS OF RECONCILIATION/ ' 

NO. 2022 DELANCEY PLACE, PHILADELPHIA, PA. 

1887. 



A 



Copyright, 1887, by L. C. Baker. 



The Library 
op Congress 

-WASHINGTON 



PREFACE. 



This book is a series of Bible studies, from a new- 
point of view, of the burning question of future punish- 
ment. Its author has served for many years in the min- 
istry of the Presbyterian Church. No other church 
stands more in need of a free discussion of the vital 
questions raised in this volume. He has herein asserted, 
both for himself and for his brethren, the right to inquire 
into matters about which he knows many of the minis- 
ters and members of that church are profoundly exer- 
cised, but concerning which many of them believe they 
are bound to keep silent. He cannot, for a moment, ac- 
cept that low idea of the church which makes it a merely 
voluntary association, formed in the interests of a certain 
system of doctrine. It is a living body, formed for 
growth in knowledge and purity. And to such increase 
each member is bound to contribute as God may give 
him light and opportunity. This carries with it the right, 
and just at this time of excited interest on this subject 
imposes the duty, to reverently investigate the matters 
treated of in this volume. The author can render no 
higher service to his own church than to assert within 
her, and for her, this principle of liberty. 

These pages are prepared also in the interest of that 
large class of Christians in all churches who believe 
the Bible to be the Word of God, and yet whose loyalty 
to it is put to a painful test by their inability to reconcile 

iii 



iv Preface. 

its teachings about future punishment with what they 
have learned from its pages, and from their own enlight- 
ened convictions, of the character of God. A church, 
which builds hospitals for the sick, and retreats for the 
aged and the poor and the insane, which seeks to carry 
Christ's consolation to men of every class, maimed and 
wounded in this battle of life, which carries His gospel 
to the sons of want on heathen shores, and which grows 
into the life of Christ by so doing, cannot long remain 
content with a view of His redeeming work which 
makes death the limit of it, and which estops her from 
any further priestly ministry toward the ignorant and the 
outcast beyond the grave. In the present bewilderment 
of the church upon this subject, this book shows that 
a perfectly satisfactory solution is to be found in the 
Scriptures themselves by those who search for it. Two 
fatal misconceptions have thus far prevented her from 
perceiving it. 

i. She has interpreted the Scripture teaching concern- 
ing final judgment as relating chiefly to a remote assize 
to be held after a general resurrection of the dead 
Whereas Jesus was careful to teach His disciples that 
He would enter upon His office as Judge of the world 
before that generation passed away. 

2. She has therefore misconceived the place and mean- 
ing of resurrection in the divine economy, as the gra- 
cious provision of another life to those who must suffer 
the wages of sin under that judgment. That which was 
meant to be a boon, the purchase of the ransom given 
for all, has been perverted into an untold curse to all who 
have died unsaved in this life, — the prelude to an aggra- 



Preface. v 

vated retribution and endless despair. This monstrous 
mistake concerning the purpose of God in raising the 
dead has vitiated the eschatology of the church for fif- 
teen centuries. It has drawn a mask over His face, and 
blinded men to the knowledge of the only true God and 
of Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. 

This mistake has largely arisen from the attempt to fix 
a meaning upon the words of Christ concerning the pun- 
ishment of the wicked without a previous study of the 
Old Testament conceptions out of which this teaching 
grew, and upon which it was based. 

This book carries its readers back to this beginning, 
and invites them to proceed from it to the study of this 
whole subject of man's destiny, of God's great plan of 
grace, and of the church's priestly calling under it. It 
finds in the principle that resurrection is redemptive the 
key to the mysteries of this subject. With this in hand, 
we are enabled to give proper place to the Scripture- 
teaching about the punishment of sin, in that it makes 
the death-state, or sheol, to be essentially penal, deep- 
ened and prolonged according to the intensity of evil 
character; and in that it makes resurrection a process 
of sorting and judgment as well as of deliverance. It 
thus presents a doctrine of retribution in harmony with 
the laws of life, as well as with the Word of God, and 
so erects a barrier against that crude universalism which 
has come in as a reaction against the old creed-doctrine 
of hell, and which tendis to weaken the bonds of human 
society by concealing from men their accountability to 
God. And yet, on the other hand, it makes room for 
the larger hope, which has made for itself a lasting place 



vi Preface. 

in the convictions of enlightened Christians. But it 
locates this hope in the only place where Scripture gives 
it warrant. It insists that sinful men must first serve out 
their death-sentence, and be restored to the life and estate 
of manhood through resurrection, before they can be 
amenable to the discipline of the gospel, and capable of 
winning the prize it sets before them. If there be any 
probation in Hades, it can only be a probation for resur- 
rection. After that, men who died in ignorance of this 
great salvation may have their opportunity to win it. 
The superiority of this scriptural doctrine of the larger 
hope over that now known as the Andover view, lies in 
the fact that it preserves undiminished the Scripture 
warnings of the present peril which overhangs men who 
die in their sins. It makes no room for intervention in 
their behalf, until after the righteousness of God is fully 
vindicated in their punishment, and the sentence of His 
law executed. Beyond this His grace has provided to 
again take up their case in the only way possible — 
through their resurrection from the dead. 

It will be seen also that this doctrine of redemption 
through resurrection, of which a chosen seed are the 
first recipients, and which proceeds from them in wider 
circles until all the families of the earth are reached, is 
in accord with those organic principles which underlie 
the constitution of the human race, and by which it is 
seen to be something besides an aggregation of individ- 
uals. The laws of race-life and the laws of heredity all 
receive new meaning from it. 

A want of the proper view of human destiny, and of 
the calling of the church in relation to the mass of man- 



Preface. vii 

kind, out of which she is an election, has been a most 
fruitful cause of her debasement and division. A true 
knowledge of the goal towards whieh we are all tend- 
ing, would be a most powerful means of drawing into the 
unity of the faith her scattered bands. These pages are 
now sent forth with the conviction that they contain 
that truth which the church especially needs in this day 
to reconcile the conflicting views of human destiny by 
which she is distracted and perplexed, and that they will 
so help her on in that path to unity, which she must 
tread before the world will believe that the Father sent 
the Son to be its Saviour, and before she can fulfil her 
high mission in the future as the chosen vehicle of His 
Life and blessing to all mankind. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 



CHAPTER I. 
Introductory 1 

CHAPTER II. 
The True Method of Inquiry ....... 5 

CHAPTER III. 
The Song op Moses 10 

CHAPTER IV, 
Judgment in Psalm and Prophecy ...... 24 

CHAPTER V. 
Correction through Judgment ...... 30 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Lord Shall Judge His People 85 

CHAPTER VII. 

Redemption through Resurrection 43 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Redemption through Resurrection 50 

CHAPTER IX. 
Redemption through Resurrection 57 

CHAPTER X. 
Captivity Captive 64 

CHAPTER XI. 
Unquenchable Eire . . . . . ... . 71 

CHAPTER XII. 
Later Jewish Opinion 77 

ix 



x Contents. 

PART II. 

CHAPTER I. 
The Axe laid at the Root of the Tree . . * . . 87 

CHAPTER II. 
Gehenna . . . . . . . . . . . 94 

CHAPTER III. 
Eternal Fire, A Fact op Science as well as op Scripture 104 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Judgment-Scene op Matt. xxv. 31-46 .... 115 

CHAPTER V. 
The Resurrection op Judgment 138 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Judge op Quick and Dead . . . . . . 151 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Judgment op the Great White Throne . . . 158 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Retribution in Apostolic Preaching 173 

CHAPTER IX. 
Retribution in St. Paul's Epistles 183 

CHAPTER X. 
Retribution in the Catholic Epistles . . . . . 200 

CHAPTER XI. 
Retribution in the Apocalypse 215 

CHAPTER XII. 

Review 230 

APPENDIX A 254 

APPENDIX B . . . . 259 



PART I. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

Very many persons are reluctant to admit the right to 
enter upon such investigations as we now propose. In 
their view whatever is generally accepted by the church 
as true and as taught in Scripture, and to which she has 
given formal sanction in her public standards, should be 
regarded as settled. And he who would reopen such 
questions is looked upon as a troubler in Israel. 

Such persons, however, need to be reminded that, in 
ill that pertains to The Last Things, there is very wide 
diversity in the beliefs and the teachings of the best and 
snost enlightened Christians. Every church is compelled 
to allow great liberty here, because of the obscurity of 
the subject and the confessed inability of even herwisest 
teachers to grasp it. Moreover, we have no right to 
assume that any interpretation of these subjects is, of 
necessity, correct, because it has been long and widely 
received. The whole history of the professed people of 
God proves that they have long and repeatedly acqui- 
esced in the gravest errors, and enforced as orthodox 
the most meagre and mistaken opinions. The genera- 
tion of Jews in our Lord's time had been carefully in- 
structed in the Old Testament Scriptures. And yet all 
the orthodox conceptions of the Messiah's office were 
painfully wrong. 

The whole synagogue were blind to the most import- 
ant features of His redeeming work, and especially failed 
to see how the Scriptures taught that He must needs 



2 The Fire of GocPs Anger. 

suffer and be killed, and the third day rise again. If the 
Lord has thus allowed whole generations of His people 
to misconceive important features of His revealed Word, 
He may, for some wise purpose, do this again. In view 
of this past history of Israel, and of similar blindnesses 
which have come upon the church during the centuries 
of her experience, how can any one affirm that she may 
not be mistaken about many things pertaining to the 
future of which she seems most confident ? 

It is often said that the Bible is a plain book addressed 
to plain people. And therefore the common under- 
standing of what it teaches concerning any great matter 
of doctrine must be correct. And yet these w common 
understandings " of men have been most faulty in the 
past. They may be so now. They will be necessarily 
so unless these prevalent judgments are of a higher order 
than those which are merely literal or logical. They 
must be spiritual. Truths may be so stated in the Word 
of God as that the mere literalist, or the man of mere 
intellectual insight, shall necessarily mistake. Only he 
that is spiritual judgeth all things. Moreover, the church 
will be almost sure to err if she assumes that she 
"knoweth anything yet as she ought to know." (i Cor. 
viii. 2.) So long as she notoriously fails to realize that 
unity for which her Lord prayed, and which was to be the 
witness to the world of His divine mission, so long all 
her conceptions of His truth must be partial. A frag- 
mentary church is but a broken vessel, unfit to contain 
either the divine life or the divine knowledge in its full- 
ness. The Holy Spirit was given to illumine the One 
body of the One Lord. It is only with all saints that we 



Introductory. 3 

can comprehend the love which passeth knowledge. If 
even an inspired apostle could say, " For we know in 
part and prophesy in part," surely these marred and 
broken sections of the church cannot be too humble in 
their claims. The church's divided state is prima facie 
proof of her imperfect knowledge of God's word. She 
is therefore bound to refuse the assumption that she has 
nothing more to learn, and to hold herself open to re- 
ceive light from whatever quarter it may come. Indeed, 
her constant prayer should be for a deeper understanding 
of the mystery of Christ, in which are hidden all the 
treasures of wisdom and of knowledge. And instead of 
frowning upon any of her children who may reverently 
believe that God has given him a revelation for the com- 
mon benefit, she should "despise not prophesyings." 
She must indeed " try the spirits ; because many false 
prophets have gone out into the world." And yet she 
cannot be too careful lest, by her harsh tests and her ser- 
vile adherence to preconceived opinions, she stifle within 
her the voice of that Spirit whose office it is to guide her 
into all truth and show her things to come. And just 
as it was true of the first disciples that there were many 
things He should hereafter show them because they could 
not bear them then, so it has been always true that God 
has caused new light to break forth from His Word as 
men have been prepared to receive it. There are secret 
things there which have been brought to light in His 
good time, and there are yet other things tt to be testified 
in due time." (i Tim. ii. 6.) 

Moreover, it would be strange indeed if there were no 
new light to be expected from the book of God's works 



4 The Fire of God's Anger. 

upon dark places in. His Word. Both are from the same 
hand. The wonderful progress made in these last days 
in the study of nature, however much it may have been 
marred by the natural blindness and conceit of men, has 
certainly given us a larger knowledge of the great plans 
of its Author. And this knowledge cannot but be useful 
in aiding us to a broader and better understanding of 
His Word, in which these plans are more fully outlined. 

The writer has a firm conviction that there are two 
great facts of Scripture which must be made the centres 
of far wider circles of truth than we have yet grouped 
around them. These are the facts of judgment for sin, 
and of Redemption through resurrection. He is also 
persuaded that the times are ripe for, and the church is 
earnestly crying out for, some such restatement oi these 
great mysteries as shall harmonize them with all that she 
has learned of the condition of man and of the character 
of God. 

And he enters this field of inquiry not to criticize or 
to dogmatize, but as an humble seeker after truth, hoping, 
if he fail to find it, that he may at least point out a path 
along which it may be sought, and which leads out of 
our present twilight toward the sun-rising. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE TRUE METHOD OF INQUIRY. 

The church doctrine* of future punishment is wholly 
drawn from the New Testament. A glance at any of its 
Confessions or Manuals of Theology will show that all 
the proof texts, whose support is of any value, are taken 
from this part of Scripture. The Old Testament economy, 
through the whole period of its history, a period longer 
than the Christian dispensation, was carried on without 
any clear revelation to men of their liability to an ever- 
lasting punishment in hell after death. The first five 
books, in which the principles of this divine economy 
are fully set forth and its laws and ordinances fixed, are 
silent as to this point. They contain much concerning 
God's purposes toward mankind. They reveal Him most 
plainly as the Righteous One, before the consuming fire 
of whose anger the wicked are destroyed. But there is 
no threat of their never-ending torment in hell after death. 
We find then that, when God was revealing to men such 
truth about Himself and His relation to mankind as was 
to be the basis of their moral discipline, and of their wor- 
ship and obedience for centuries, He gave them no clear 
warning of such tremendous doom. Nor did the Psalms 
and Prophets supply this defect. Not a single passage 
in these later Scriptures would be suspected of teaching 
this doctrine, did not the reflected light of certain pas- 
sages in the New Testament seem to invest them with 
this meaning. 

* By '« church doctrine " is meant the doctrine set forth in the accepted 
standards, as, e. g. the Westminster Confession, chaps, xxxii. and xxxiii. 

5 



6 The Fire of God's Anger. 

The three principal proof-texts quoted from the Old 
Testament in its support are : 

1. Daniel xii : 2, which seems to assert the resurrection 
of some who sleep in the dust of the earth to shame and 
everlasting contempt. Tregelles (on Daniel pp. 162-167) 
makes it probable that it is tlie unawakened sleepers, not 
resurrected, who are left to shame and contempt as captives 
in the realms of death. The same view is ably maintained 
by Dr. N. West in a recent number of the Fresbyterian 
Review, in an exhaustive criticism upon the passage. 

2. Isaiah (xxxiii: 14) asks the question, "Who among 
us shall dwell with everlasting burnings ?" in which the 
answer is pre-supposed that none shall be able to dwell 
with such devouring fire, unless it be the righteous, of 
whom the next verses speak. 

3. Isaiah lxvi: 24, gives a vision of the dead carcasses 
of transgressors, whose corruption cannot be arrested, nor 
can the fire that consumes them be quenched. Similar 
Old Testament uses of the term "unquenchable fire" oc- 
cur in Jeremiah xvii: 27; xxi: 12. 

We refer to these three passages, however, not for the 
purpose of advocating any special interpretation of them, 
but in order to show how doubtful and slender a support 
is given in even these strongest Old Testament passages 
to a doctrine of such tremendous weight as the endless 
torment in hell of all who die in their sins. They con- 
firm what we have said that this is not a plain doctrine 
of the Old Testament. And yet from all we know of the 
character of God we should suppose that, if true, He would 
not have left His chosen people, nor mankind at large for 
so many generations, in ignorance of it. 



Tke True Method of Inquiry. 7 

And this brings us to remark upon the defective method 
by which this doctrine has been drawn from the Bible. 
It has been taken from one portion of it. Men have be- 
lieved it to be clearly taught in the New Testament. And 
so they have forced the Old Testament to yield it some 
support. We cannot, of course, affirm that God might 
not have concealed this doctrine from the men of past 
ages, bringing it out at a later age through Him who spake 
as never man spake. We must affirm, however, that this 
is highly improbable. It is strangely unlike our God. 
All other great truths of such immense importance to 
mankind, the sacrificial death of Christ, His resurrection 
and the consequent resurrection of all men, the restitu- 
tion of all things, *were spoken of, at least darkly, by the 
mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. 
We understand them, as revealed in the New Testament, 
because they were all typically and germinally revealed 
in the Old. Nor is the Old Testament silent upon the 
great features of human destiny. God's wrath against 
sin, and the final outcome of His dealings with men and 
with nations on account of it, stand out luminous upon 
its pages. The doctrine of future judgment, the awards of 
life and death, reaching by implication far beyond the 
bounds of time, the tests of character to which all men 
should be brought under the Messiah's reign, and the 
final subjection to it of all men and of all things in heaven 
and on earth, — the Old Testament pages glow with these 
themes of living interest. 

And hence we are right in insisting that the church 
has pursued a wrong method in making up her doctrine 
concerning the final destiny of men. 



8 The Fire of God^s Anger. 

She has first fixed her faith from the New Testament 
and then inquired what support she could find for it in the 
Old. This process should have been reversed. She 
should have first inquired what God had been teaching 
for four thousand years concerning the great problems of 
man's duty and destiny. And then she might have come 
with a truer intelligence to the interpretation of the later rev- 
elation. We are in no proper mood to understand these 
"hard sayings'' of Jesus unless we first "know the Scrip- 
tures." They were spoken to men who had been taught 
from these Scriptures all their lives and who were yet 
strangely blind to their meaning. They pre-supposethis 
previous revelation. They were never meant to be under- 
stood apart from it. They were surely not meant to 
annul or supersede it. We are unprepared, therefore, to 
advance to their interpretation before we have made our- 
selves familiar with that body of truth upon which they 
are grafted. 

There must be falseness somewhere in a method which 
leads men to imagine that the words which fell from the 
lips of Jesus are less gracious than those which God 
spake unto the fathers by the prophets. We have been 
compelled to assume that the more fully God has re- 
vealed Himself the less is He seen to be Love. 

We have formed a portrait of Him on the canvass of 
our narrow exegesis and with the hard drawn lines of our 
pitiless logic, until even good men have revolted from 
the image as if our God were a fiend. 

This treatise is an attempt to study this deep subject 
along the lines of what we have indicated as the only true 
method. We shall first seek to ascertain what the Old 



The True Method of Inquiry. 9 

Scriptures, to which Jesus and His apostles constantly 
appealed as the source of all their teaching, have to say 
upon the dark problems of human destiny. And then 
we shall advance to the interpretation of New Testament 
teaching by the light thus derived. 

We know of no recent attempts to solve this great 
question in which this method is pursued. Canon Far- 
rar's " Eternal Hope" gives us much that is bright and 
comforting on one side of this question. His discussion 
is able and learned and throws much light upon the mean- 
ing of special texts. But it is unsatisfactory, in failing to 
lay down a broad Scriptural basis upon which to rest 
this hope. The same may be said of his more recent 
book, " Mercy and Judgment." Dr. Pusey, on the other 
side, in his able inquiry, u What is of faith as to everlast- 
ing punishment?" has linked together a surprising catena 
of proof-passages from Apocryphal and Rabbinical writers 
and from the Christian fathers, but he has not told us 
what the Old Testament prophets believed. They are the 
only " Fathers" who can speak to us with authority upon 
this matter. Jesus placed His divine seal upon their 
teaching. We are therefore right in demanding that, 
before we decide upon the meaning of His teaching con- 
cerning human destiny, we examine what is revealed about 
it In the law and prophets which He came not to set aside, 
but to fulfill. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE SONG OF MOSES. 

(Deut. xxxii.) 

If any passage of Scripture deserves to be regarded as 
a key to the whole, it is this passage. It was spoken at 
a most important period in Israel's history. Their 
wanderings and long chastisement in the desert were 
now over and they stood upon the borders of the pro- 
mised land. Moses had reviewed for them this history 
and enforced its solemn lessons. He had recited again 
the law, with its blessings and curses, and entreated them 
by these weighty sanctions to obey it. And yet he fore- 
saw that they would disobey and that this long catalogue 
of evils would be visited upon them. 

About to be removed from them by death, the Lord 
commands him to speak this song in their ears and to 
write it out as a testimony against them. 

The passage is a vindication and a prophecy. It 
surveys the past and gazes far down into the future. It 
hints at God's deep designs in allowing these failures of 
His people and in their subsequent chastisements. It 
foreshadows the calling of the Gentiles. It speaks of a. 
series of revenges upon the enemies who had wrought 
the ruin of His people and provoked His anger, and 
ends by summoning the nations to rejoice with His 
people in the mercy with which this long history of sin 
and of suffering should close. 

Let us now examine minutely what this song teaches 

concerning the wages of sin; concerning judgment and 

retribution, and concerning redemption and resurrection, 

10 



The Song of Moses. 11 

and the final outcome of this deep problem of the world 
and of man. 

1. The importance of the matters which make up the 
substance of this song is such that Heaven and Earth 
are invited to hear it. 

" Give ear, O ye Heavens, and I will speak ; and hear, O Earth, 
the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my 
speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender 
herb and as the showers upon the grass." (vs. 1-2.) 

Even the song of judgment is for the refreshment and 
growth of those who hear it. 

2. The subject of the song is declared. 

11 Because I will publish the name of the Lord : ascribe- ye great- 
ness unto our God. He is the Rock, His work is perfect : for all 
His ways are judgment ; a God of truth and without iniquity, just 
and right is He." (vs. 3-4.) 

The strain of these verses is the one which is taken up 
in " the Song of Moses the servant of God, and the Song 
of the Lamb.'' (Rev. xv. 3, 4). The subject of this 
Song is the same as of that, only the redemption phase 
comes out more brightly in that song of victory. The 
Song in the Revelation contains but two verses, and 
these are drawn from the beginning and the ending of 
this Song of Moses. There can be no doubt, therefore, 
that the Song of Moses referred to in the Revelation is 
not the one He sang after the passage of the Red Sea 
(Ex. xv.), but this Song of Judgment, which was spoken 
under such impressive circumstances just before his death. 

3. It asserts the wickedness and ingratitude of the 
chosen people and recounts their mercies and apostasies. 

" They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of 
His children : they are a perverse and crooked generation. Do 



12 The Fire of God's Anger. 

ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise ? Is not He 
thy Father that hath bought thee ? hath He not made thee and 
established thee ? 

u Remember the days of old, consider the years of many genera- 
tions : ask thy father and he will shew thee ; thy elders, and they 
will tell thee. When the Most High divided to the nations their 
inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the 
bounds of the people according to the number of the children of 
Israel. For the Lord's portion is His people ; Jacob is the lot of 
His inheritance. He found him in a desert land, in a waste how- 
ling wilderness; He led him about ; He instructed him, He kept 
him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, 
fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, 
beareth them on her wings ; so the Lord alone did lead him, and 
there was no strange god with ,him. He made him ride on the 
high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the 
fields ; and He made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil 
out of the flinty rock ; butter of kine and milk of sheep, with fat of 
lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of 
kidneys of wheat ; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape. 

u But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked ; thou art waxen fat, thou 
art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness ; then he forsook 
God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his sal- 
vation. They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods, with 
abominations provoked they Him to anger. They sacrificed unto 
devils, not to God ; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods 
that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. Of the Rock 
that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that 
formed thee." (Vs. 5-18.) 

Observe here that, behind the forms and forces of nature 
worshiped as gods, there were demoniac powers, the real 
recipients of this homage. "They sacrificed unto devils." 

4. It declares the Lord's abhorrence of their sins, their 
consequent rejection, and the calling out from the Gen- 
tiles of a new people. 



The Song of Moses. 13 

11 And when the Lord saw it, He abhorred them, because of the 
provoking of his sons and of his daughters. And He said, I will 
hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be : for 
they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. 
They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God ; they 
have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move 
them to jealousy with those which are not a people ; I will pro- 
voke them to anger with a foolish nation." (Vs. 19-21.) 

Their rejection, however, would not be final. So St. 
Paul affirms in the eleventh chapter of Romans, after 
his quotation of the last verse of the above passage 
at the close of the tenth. 

5. It affirms that the Lord's anger, which must burn 
against them on account of their sins, must burn also to 
the final destruction of this world system under which 
this depravity in His people had been developed. 

" For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the 
lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set 
on fire the foundations of the mountains." Verse 22. 

Here occurs the first mention in Scripture of the fire 
of Hell. It is represented as burning down to the regions 
of the dead, and to the very foundations of this natural 
order, as if it were the source of that corruption which 
had come upon His people. 

Here we meet with a principle of the divine judgments 
whose importance cannot be overestimated ; that which 
views the present cosmos or natural system as sharing 
in the responsibility for man's evil nature. As subject 
to vanity and in bondage to corruption, it has put its yoke 
on its highest creature, and it is therefore bound over to 
the consuming fire of God's judgments. It may seem to 
us irrational that accountability should attach in any way 



14 The Fire of God^s Anger. 

to a material system. But if the whole system is perva- 
ded by living forces ; if it is the visible representative of 
lt things invisible/' which according to Colossians i : 14 
are living powers, it will not appear so strange that the 
searching fire of God's anger should find evil intrenched 
at its very foundations, and that this present order and 
the powers that rule in it, with the devil, who is declared 
to be its prince (St. John xii : 31), should be involved 
in a common judgment.* We shall see hereafter how 
fully this principle is recognized in Scripture as palliating 
the moral turpitude of men and as furnishing a plea for 
divine interference in their behalf. 

6. The temporal calamities which should soon over- 
take His people would be in the line of this consuming 
fire; manifestations of the same destructive energy 
against sin which must finally " consume the earth." 

The term " fire " stands for the concentrated energy of 
the dissolving forces of nature. It is the rapid consumer 
of created forms. But this devouring energy operates 
in slower ways. It is more or less resisted and for a 
while baffled. And yet Scripture groups all the forms 
in which human lives are blighted and destroyed under 
this one head and refers them to one agency.f u Our 
God is a consuming fire/' And so we read 

" I will heap mischiefs upon them ; I will spend mine arrows 
upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger and devoured with 
burning heat, and with bitter destruction. I will also send the 
teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. 



* See upon this subject " Mystery of Creation and of Man," chapters VI 
and VII. 

f See " Mystery of Creation/' etc. page 169. 



The Song of Moses. 15 

The sword without and terror within shall destroy both the young 
man and the virgin, the suckling, with the man of gray hairs." 
vs. 23-25. 

7. These judgments would make an utter end of His 
people, were it not that the enemy's triumph over them 
would thereby be complete, and his impudent boast 
against the God of Israel be justified. 

" I said I would scatter them into corners. I would make the 
remembrance of them to cease from among men ; were it not that 
I feared the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves 
strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high and the Lord 
hath not done all this." (Vs„ 25-27.) 

These words have primary reference to the taunts of 
their human adversaries. But they look beyond these. 
This song deals with secret things yet sealed up among 
God's treasures. The doctrine of diabolic agency, lying 
back of human instruments, and as concerned in this 
warfare against God's people, and of Satan as their chief 
enemy, had not yet been plainly revealed. But this song 
is of wide scope. It views as from a height this age- 
long and world-wide conflict. We have seen that it looks 
forward to a judgment upon this "present evil world," 
the fashion of which must pass away. And now it 
brings to view an " enemy" and certain adversaries who 
have well nigh brought God's people to ruin, and who 
would have made an utter end of them, but whom Je- 
hovah, for the love He bears them and for the honor of 
His name, shall baffle and defeat. 

8. If His people were but wise enough to understand 
this and to act in the faith and hope of this coming de- 
liverance, they would now be able to put all these 
enemies to flight. 



16 The Fire of God's Anger, 

" For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any un- 
derstanding in them. 

" Oh, that they were wise, that they understood this, that they 
would consider their latter end !" (Would that their faith could 
apprehend the deliverance that must finally be theirs!) "How 
should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, 
except their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up." 
(Vs. 28-30.) 

The closing words of verse 30 give, in parenthesis, the 
reason why they prevailed so little against their enemies. 
He, who was their Refuge, had given them up to judicial 
blindness and bondage on account of their sins. 

And yet the Rock of their enemies was not as their 
Rock, as they themselves must confess. (Verse 31.) 

9. Trust in false gods is but a delusive and poisonous 
exhilaration, a draught of deadly venom. And yet of 
such wine would Israel drink. 

" For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of 
Gomorrah, their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter : 
Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps." 
(Vs. 32-33.) 

10. The mystery of God's people as thus enthralled 
is next referred to. And the " times" during which this 
il mystery of iniquity" should work, with the final issues 
of it are declared to be in His own power. 

" Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my 
treasures ?" (Verse 34.) 

11. Jehovah now asserts himself as a God of ven- 
geance and recompense. He had already declared the 
woes that He would send upon His people. But now 
His thought turns to the enemies, who had been the in- 
struments of His punishment. They had seduced and 



The Song of Moses. 17 

enslaved His people. And for this and for all their sins 
His wrath must come upon them. 

" To me belongeth vengeance and recompense ; their foot shall 
slide in due time : for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the 
things that shall come upon them make haste." (Verse 35.) 

12. He will judge His people, and turn toward them, 
after they have been brought low T , and have become con- 
vinced that their false gods can bring them no help. 

" For the Lord shall judge His people, and repent himself for 
His servants, when He seeth that their power is gone, and there is 
none shut up or left. And He shall say, Where are their gods, 
their rock in whom they trusted, which did eat the fat of their 
sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings ? let them 
rise up and help you, and be your protection." (Vs. 36-38.) 

His judgment of His people, however severe, would 
be for their salvation. 

He would bring them into such humiliation that they 
will accept of the punishment of their iniquity, (see 
Lev. xxvi. 41 43,) and confess the impotence of the 
false gods in which they had trusted. 

When men are brought low with no power to help 1 
themselves, and with every refuge failing them, then at 
such a time the grace of God comes to the rescue. 

13. And so the Lord proclaims himself as their only- 
Saviour, in that He alone is Lord of Life and of Death. 
His judgments must fall upon His people unto death. 
They must be handed over to the great Destroyer. And 
one generation after another must go down as captives 
into his gloomy realms. In this, the triumph of their 
enemy over them seemed complete and irreversible. But 
nothing is too hard for a God who can heal as well as 

2 



18 The Fire of God's Anger. 

wound, who can make alive as well as kill, and out of 
whose hands none can fall. 

" See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no strange god 
with me : I kill and I make alive ; I wound and I heal ; neither 
is there any that can deliver out of my hand." (Vs. 39.) 

Here we have an early intimation pf that grand truth 
which runs through the Bible and underlies its whole 
redemptive system. Our redeeming God can make 
alive from death. He is the God of resurrection. So 
that not even death, which holds of right his people 
captive, can annul or defeat his gracious designs toward 
them. He can redeem them from the power of even 
the last enemy. 

14. Hence, this song passes on to declare his sworn 
purpose to defeat and destroy all their enemies. He 
now makes His people's cause His own. And so we 
have, in grand outline, a series of revenges upon all 
their enemies, human and diabolic ; a triumph which 
looks forward to their deliverance from death and from 
their chief enemy, which can be no other than " him 
that hath the power of death, that is, the devil." 

" For I lift up my hand to heaven and say, I live forever." Vs. 40. 

He swears by Himself, the Living One. This name, 
itself, is the defeat of death. 

" If I whet my glittering sword and mine hand take hold of 
judgment ; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will re- 
ward them that hate me." Vs. 41. 

Israel's enemies are now Jehovah's enemies. 

" I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword 
shall devour flesh, and that with the blood of the slain and of the 



The Song of Moses. 19 

captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy." 
(Vs. 42). 

These words evidently cover a wide sweep of judg- 
ments. They predict the slaughter of their human 
enemies, the overthrow of them that had held them in 
captivity, and of the " head or chief of the princes of the 
enemy!' 

The English version translates the last clause of this 
verse, " from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.'' 
The Septuagint give the sense as above. And this is 
the meaning assigned to the word fleraoth by Gesenius. 
See also Robert Young's version and his Concordance 
under the word " revenges." The reference is to the 
chief enemy, before spoken of in vs. 27. The song 
looks forward, therefore, to a culminating triumph over 
the great Adversary of God and man, the Prince of this 
world and head over all its evil powers. All Scripture 
teaches that he must be held to a final responsibility for 
the evil and misery which have come upon the people 
of God and upon the human race. And hence this 
song, among its sealed-up treasures (vs. 34), declares 
God's purpose to finally bind and destroy this great 
enemy. We should not have known that this purpose 
is here concealed, had not all subsequent Scripture 
taught us that the work of redemption must reach on 
to this consummation. But now we go back to this 
key-passage of the Old Testament and find it there. 

15. And so the song closes by calling upon the 
nations to join with Israel in their joy over this coming 
deliverance. 

"Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people : for He will avenge the 



20 The Fire of God's Anger. 

blood of His servants, and will render vengeance to His adver- 
saries, and will be merciful unto His land and to His people."* 

That a triumph over other than mere human enemies 
of Israel is referred to is manifest from the fact that the 
nations are summoned to rejoice with them. They are 
also sharers in its joy and blessing. And hence this 
passage is quoted by St. Paul (Romans xv : 10,) as prov- 
ing that, in the mission of Jesus Christ to the world to 
confirm the promises made to the fathers, the Gentiles 
also should glorify God for his mercy. All God's adver- 
saries shall finally be trampled out under the conquering 
feet of His Son, who, in His resurrection, led captivity 
captive. He has defeated and shall finally destroy death 
and him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil. 
(Heb. ii: 14.) He shall destroy all the works of the 
devil, and all God's enemies shall perish. 

Such is the close of this song of judgment. It breaks 
out at the end into a song of redemption. And hence it 
furnishes the deeper tones in that splendid song of tri- 
umph which the victors sing, standing on the sea of glass, 
(Rev. xv : 3, 4.) " The Song of Moses, the servant of God, 
and of the Lamb," saying ; Great and marvellous are thy 



* It is interesting to observe how the Septuagint translators have amplified 
the doxology in the closing verse of this song, showing their sense of the im- 
portance of this passage, as looking beyond all temporary deliverances to 
a final redemption from all the power of the enemy. They call upon the 
Heavens and all the ange^ of God and all the sons of God to join with Israel 
and the nations in joy and praise. ''Rejoice, ye heavens, with Him, and 
worship before Him, all ye angels of God. Rejoice, ye nations, with His 
people, and let all the sons of God strengthen themselves in Him; because 
He revengeth the blood of His sons. And He shall judge and requite justice 
to his enemies and recompense them that hate Him. And the Lord will 
thoroughly cleanse His land and people." 



The Song of Moses. 21 

works, Lord God Almighty ; just and true are thy ways 
thou King of nations. Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, 
and glorify thy name ? for Thou only art holy : for all 
nations shall come and worship before Thee ; for thy judg- 
ments are made manifest 

The two focal points then around which the far reach- 
ing lines of this prophetic song curve are these, Judg- 
ment and Redemption. These are the two great principles 
of the divine dealing which appear in the history of Israel 
and of mankind. The two are not antagonistic but sup- 
plementary. " All His ways are judgment/' (vs. 4,) but 
they issue in redemption. And "His ways He made 
known unto Moses ;" how He chides His people for their 
sins, but keeps not His anger forever. (Psalm 103 : 7-9.) 

As to these principles, we have seen 

L The wide scope of His judgments. 

a. His people must receive at his hand double for all 
their sins. (vs. 21-26.) 

b. The nations who oppress them must, in their turn, 
suffer under the heavy hand of His judgments, (vs. 35.) 

c. The invisible spiritual enemies, of whom men are 
often the puppets, and who use them to carry on their 
warfare against God's people, must fall under His wrath. 
The fire of His anger shall burn against even the present 
system of Nature in which these foes are intrenched, the 
Earth and the foundations thereof. (Verse 22.) 

d. He shall bruise the head and finally destroy the 
great adversary of God and man, and death, the last 
enemy. (Vs. 42-43.) 

II. But these judgments are in order to redemption. 
They issue in the redemption of His people, of mankind 



22 The Fire of God's Anger. 

and of the Earth. The oppressors' yoke is broken by 
them. And death's captives are liberated through a tri- 
umph over death. The God who lives forever, who 
kills, can also make alive, (verse 39.) Not even death 
can remove any of His creatures out of His hand. This 
indeed is the vital, the essential fact in His redeeming 
work. Death is the worst and apparently the most in- 
vincible of all our enemies. All other agencies of divine 
wrath, war, famine, wasting sickness, are but handmaids 
to this supreme foe. No redemption can avail for man 
which does not redeem from death. No deliverance 
from captivity amounts to anything which does not 
reach the captives in the realms of death. Hence it is 
the deepest truth of redemption that our Redeemer is the 
God of resurrection. This truth is but dimly traced 
through the Old Testament, as compared with its bold 
outlines in the New. But it is there. And here, in this 
grand key-passage to all subsequent psalm and prophecy 
and history, we find it. 

Proof that the Jews had some understanding of the great 
truth of redemption as dependent upon resurrection, and 
of this truth as taught in this passage, (verse 39) is found 
in the paraphrase of it given in the Jerusalem Targum : 

" See now that I in my Word am He, and there is no other God 
beside me. I kill the living in this world and make alive the 
dead in the world that cometh ; I am He who smiteth and I am He 
who healeth, and there is none who can deliver from my hand." 

So also in the Jewish liturgies, (Home's Introduction 
Vol. 2. p. 107,) we find the prayer: 

" Thou, O Lord, of thy abundant mercy makest the dead 
to live. Thou raise th up those who fall ; thou healest the 



The Song of Moses. 23 

sick, thou loosest them who are bound, and makest good thy 
word of truth to those who sleep in the dust. Who is to be 
compared to thee, O thou Lord of might ! And who is like 
unto thee, our King, who killest and makest alive, and 
makest salvation to spring as the grass in the field! Thou 
art faithful to make the dead to rise again to life. Blessed 
art thou, Lord, who raise st the dead again to lifer 



CHAPTER III. 



JUDGMENT IN PSALM AND PROPHECY. 

Most important principles of God's dealings, of the 
relations of Israel and of mankind to His government, 
and of the destiny of man and of the created system to 
which he belongs, have now been brought to view. The 
Song of Moses has declared to us God's righteousness 
and the far-reaching judgments required for its vindica- 
tion. The human race at large must pass under the 
power of death. The chosen people must suffer all 
kinds of temporal disaster and go down into the common 
grave. The nations who oppress them must be given 
over to destruction. The unseen powers of evil, who 
seduce men to worship them as " gods," but who are only 
" devils," the instigators of this reign of discord and 
misery, must be tracked to their fastnesses in this system 
of creation and punished. The earth must be baptized 
with fire. The prince of all these enemies must be cast 
out. And death, the last enemy, must be destroyed. 

If these judgments, however, were to issue in the final 
and total extinction of Israel and of mankind, God would 
be defeated and the enemy would triumph. Hence the 
Song casts a horoscope to see " what their end shall be." 
Man's extremity proves to be God's opportunity. "I 
was brought low and he helped me." Not even death 
can defeat the least of God's gracious purposes toward 
His people or annul His design in the creation of man 
and the world. The secret of relief and of victory is all 
contained in the fact that He is the Living One, the Lord 

24 



Judgment in Psalm and Prophecy. 25 

of both death and life. After the fullest vindication of 
His righteousness, after punishment has done its worst, 
and death and hell seem to be complete masters of the 
field, then the way is only the more clear for the God of 
grace and resurrection to work. 

In His wonder-working counsels Redemption through 
death and resurrection is provided, and all God's 
enemies are overthrown. Even Death itself is vanquished 
and destroyed. And so all mankind, who have been 
shut up in this bondage to sin and death, share in the 
benefits of this deliverance and are summoned to rejoice 
because of it. 

It remains for us now to see how these principles give 
tone to all subsequent Psalm and Prophecy. 

That Israel, the nations who oppressed them, and all 
the Gentiles must suffer for their sins such wrath from 
God as should fully vindicate His righteousness is the 
plainest fact of Scripture. No Bible reader will require 
us to prove this by quotations. It is found on every 
page. The prophets all denounce Israel and foretell his 
coming desolation. But their prophetic glance takes in 
also the nations with which Israel had been in any way 
associated. It includes, indeed, within its horizon, all 
mankind. After the burden of Israel is declared we have, 
as in Isaiah,the burden of Babylon, of Moab,of Damascus, 
of Egypt, of Ethiopia, of Arabia, of Tyre, and finally of 
the whole earth, (ch. xxiv.) which is made empty and 
desolate, because it is " defiled under its inhabitants, and 
the transgression thereof is heavy upon it." These 
judgments would reach them through all the channels by 
which the curses of God find out evil doers, and which 



26 The Fire of God^s Anger. 

Moses had vividly set forth in his farewell address (Deut. 
xxviii). Sickness, mildew and drought, famine, war, 
desolation of home and fields, slaughter, cruel exactions 
and tortures by triumphant enemies, captivity in distant 
lands, these were the scourges to be inflicted upon them 
beneath the rod of God's anger. 

But these woes are only the handmaids of a worse evil. 
They are the avenues of death. And hence the final 
culminating evil they must suffer under would be a long 
captivity in the realms of death. Their individual, their 
national hopes would be buried here. " Thou has visited 
and destroyed them and made all their memory to perish." 
(Is. xxvi. 14.) 

Here it is to be observed that death, bondage in Sheol, 
is viewed in the Old Testament as a final vindication of 
Jehovah's righteousness, the supreme expression of His 
anger against sin. This was the original sentence. " In 
the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." "The 
wages of sin is death." 

The idea attached to this term " death " in the Old 
Testament was the one which properly belongs to it. It 
was " cessation of being." Some passages seem to view 
this end of being as absolute. For instance, Job says 
(xiv. 10-12) " Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man 
giveth up the ghost, and where is he ? As the waters 
fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up : 
so man lieth down, and riseth not : till the heavens be 
no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their 
sleep." In Jeremiah (li. 39.) death is viewed as a " per- 
petual sleep. And yet the hope of a future reawakening 
is often expressed. Even Job, in connection with the 



Judgment in Psalm and Prophecy. 27 

above passage, affirms his belief (vs. 15) that in the end, 
" Thou shalt call and I will answer thee : thou wilt have 
a desire to the work of thy hands." 

But, before resurrection, the dead, in the Hebrew con- 
ception, were not men who had passed into another form 
of being. They were dead) not absolutely extinct; 
otherwise they could not be resurrected. But their being 
was only "the miserable consciousness of not being." 
Doubtless in their later Scriptures, and as the result of 
their religious development, they advanced to a more 
definite conviction of the conscious happiness of the 
righteous in Hades, and of the conscious misery of the 
wicked. But still the shades (Rephaim*) were viewed as 
prisoners in Sheol, without the proper prerogatives of 
being. The Hebrews never conceived of man as pro- 
perly existent apart from the body. The body was an 
essential constituent in that form of being called " man." 
It was not, therefore, judgment after death that men were 
taught to fear, but judgment in death. Man, in Sheol, 
was but a powerless shade, an exile, a captive in the 
darkness and silence of that gloomy realm. There, they 
rest together as prisoners, (Job iii. 18). They go down to 
the bars of the pit [Sheol] (xvii. 16). Prisoners of the earth, 
Lam. iii. 34. They are hid in pfison houses, Is. xlii. 22> 
given up for a spoil by Jehovah for their sins (vs. 24). 

In Isaiah (xxii. 14) it is affirmed that no temporal dis 
asters would suffice to purge the Jews of their iniquity. 
Surely this iniquity shall not be purged from you till ye 
die, saith the Lord of hosts. 



*See Gesenius upon this word, and also its use in Isaiah xiv. 9; xxvi. 
14, 19. Psalm lxxxviii. 10, et. al. 



28 The Fire of God's Anger. 

The complaints of Israel (Psalm cxli. 7 ; Ezek. xxxvii. 
1 1), under the ravages of death show that they viewed the 
great enemy as the destroyer of all their individual and 
national hopes. " Our bones are scattered at the grave's 
mouth.'' " Our bones are dried, our hope is lost : we 
are cut off for our parts." While, as regards the heathen, 
their kings and captains, in all their pomp and pride, 
with their multitudinous hosts, are viewed as brought 
down to hell and shut up there as in a prison house. 
Isaiah xiv. depicts the descent of the proud monarch of 
Babylon from his pinnacle of earthly glory down to Sheol, 
whose inhabitants are stirred up to meet and to mock 
this great one of the earth, now become as weak and 
nerveless as one of themselves. In Ezekiel xxxii. we 
have a similar picture of the casting down of "the multitude 
of Egypt," " into the nether parts of the earth, with them 
that go down into the pit." "Asshur (Assyria) is there, and 
all her company : his graves are about him: all of them slain, 
fallen by the sword : whose graves are set in the sides of the 
pit, and her company is round about her grave, all of 
them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused terror 
in the land of the living." The same dirge is repeated 
concerning Elam, Meshech, Tubal, Edom, the princes of 
the north and all the Zidonians. All these uncircumcised 
nations were " gone down to hell " where they would be 
companions of Pharaoh and his multitude, denizens with 
them of that land of gloom and forgetfulness, fast locked 
in the embrace of death. 

We thus find that one uniform conception of the divine 
judgments against sin is current through the Old Testa- 
ment. Sinners, whether viewed as individuals or in 



Judgment in Psalm and Prophecy. 29 

masses as nations, were to be visited with all kinds of 
temporal evils in their persons, their families, their pro- 
perty, their civil liberties, until finally death should carry 
them away as captives into his dark realm. The final result 
of the divine dealing with sinners is stated in such passages 
as these : " The wicked shall be turned into hell, * (Sheol) 
and all the nations that forget God," (Psalm ix. 17.) 
" For lo, thine enemies, O Lord, for lo, thine enemies 
shall perish." (xcii. 9). We shall see, however, as we 
advance, that not even this dark realm of judgment is 
beyond the reach of His redeeming power. 



CHAPTER V. 



CORRECTION THROUGH JUDGMENT. 

That the visitations of God's anger, under which men 
suffer, are disciplinary as well as penal is a prime feature 
in Old Testament teaching. The 26th chapter of Leviticus 
contains a catalogue of terrible evils that should come 
upon the people for their sins. They were to be driven 
out of their own land into captivity, where they should 
perish among the heathen, and be eaten up by the land 
of their enemies. (Verse 38.) But if, in the place of their 
banishment, they should turn again to the Lord in humi- 
lity and should "accept of the punishment of their iniquity " 
(vs. 41-43,) Jehovah promises to remember His cov- 
enant and to forgive and restore them. 

The subsequent history of Israel fully illustrates this 
gracious dealing. " Many times did He deliver them ; 
but they provoked Him with their counsel, and were 
brought low for their iniquity. Nevertheless He regard- 
ed their affliction when He heard their cry : And he re- 
membered for them His covenant, and repented accord- 
ing to the multitude of His mercies." (Ps. cvi : 43-45.) 
The prophet Micah(vii: 7-10,) expresses in language 
beautiful and touching, the faith and penitence of the 
people when thus humbled under the mighty hand of 
God. "Therefore I will look unto the Lord; I will 
wait for the God of my salvation : my God will hear me. 
Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy : when I fall, I 
shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a 
light unto me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord, 

30 



Correction through Judgment 31 

because I have sinned against him, until He plead my 
cause, and execute judgment forme: He will bring me 
forth to the light, and I shall behold His righteousness/' 
In this passage two principles are distinctly asserted. 
I. Those who sin against the Lord must be borne down 
under the burden of His indignation. 2. If, in their low 
estate, they u accept the punishment of their iniquity/' 
the Lord will rise up for their relief and plead their cause, 
and execute judgment upon their enemies. Isaiah (xl : 
1-2), at the beginning of the second division of his pro- 
phecy, which is so full of the hopes and triumphs of the 
future, breaks out with this message of grace to Israel. — 
" Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. 
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, 
that her warfare is accomplished, her iniquity is pardon- 
ed:* for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for 
all her sins." 

Here again a return of the Lord's favor is declared 
after His people had suffered a double, that is, a most 
ample punishment for their sins. Humbled and penitent, 
the Lord now turns toward them in grace. And the 
subsequent chapters are bright with the splendors of 
their glorious future. 

It is unnecessary to multiply proofs from the Old 
Testament of this important feature in the dealings of 
God with men. All our readers recognize it and will 
admit without hesitation its application to the history of 



* Robert Young translates this phrase " accepted hath been her punish- 
ment." As the Hebrew words are the same as occur in Lev. xxvi : 41-43. 
it seems just to make their translation in Isaiah conform to this previous 
usage. 



32 . The Fire of God's Anger. 

individuals and of nations in this sphere of time. God's 
judgments are, without doubt, disciplinary and restora- 
tive this side the grave. In this world, at least, " He 
will not always chide, neither will He keep His anger 
forever." 

But here the inquiry must be raised whether this prin- 
ciple of divine dealing does not reach beyond this sphere 
of temporal suffering. To this we reply that there is 
nothing in the Old Testament, and it will be borne in 
mind that our investigation is now confined to these 
older Scriptures, which requires us to limit it to this 
life. God cannot change. If there be no restorative 
effect in His judgments beyond this life, it cannot be 
from any change in Him or in the principles of His 
government. It must result from the obduracy of the 
creature, whose character for evil becomes fixed at death. 
There is a class of texts in the Old Testament which 
seem to imply that this is the case. We read, for in- 
stance (Prov. xxix. i), " He that being often reproved 
hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed and 
that without remedy." But then, it may be asked, do 
such passages announce the only and the ultimate prin- 
ciple of God's dealing with sinners. They certainly an- 
nounce this important principle, that " the soul that sin- 
neth, it shall die." But it is also an equal principle, set 
forth, as we have seen, in the Song of Moses and verified 
in all subsequent Scripture, that God's judgments are 
corrective as well as penal. In the case of His people 
they are even redemptive. Now death is the final form 
of His judgments. Into the hands of this enemy they 
should finally be delivered. (Lev. xxvi. 25.) Of this 



Correction through Judgment 33 

captivity all others were but a type. But from it there 
was to be a deliverance. And this implies that there 
could not be in them such fixedness of evil character as to 
preclude their turning to the Lord from out the empti- 
ness and gloom of this bondage. And, therefore, the 
frequent promises of God to hear the cry of His imprisoned 
people, to loose their bonds, to plead their cause against 
the enemy, (Micah vii. 8, 9,) and to bring the prisoners 
out of the pit wherein is no water (Zech. ix. 11)* must 
reach over to and include their bondage in death. The 
words of Moses, (Deut. xxx. 4,) seem to imply precisely 
this : " If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost 
parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God 
gather thee, and from thence will He fetch thee." We 
shall see hereafter that God's promises of redemption 
are well nigh meaningless and his plan of redemption 
fruitless, unless they include this very purpose to ransom 
His people from death, after He has sent them, for their 
sins, far away into this land of captivity, and after they 
have there reaped the bitter fruits of their iniquity, and 
have been brought to accept its punishment. We shall 
be obliged to admit that, in the case of sinning Israel at 
least, the promise reaches even to the captives in the 
realms of death, " For I will not contend forever, neither 
will I be always wroth : for the spirit should fail before 
me and the souls which I have made." (Ish. lvii. 16.) 

If this be so, it establishes the important principle 
that, in the view of the Old Testament, God's covenant 
people did not pass beyond the bounds of His disciplin- 

* See Jeremy Taylor's use of this passage, as quoted by Dean Plumptree. 
Spirits in Prison, page 97. 

3 



34 The Fire of God's Anger. 

ary dealing into an unalterable state of rewards and pun- 
ishments, when they passed the bounds of death. The 
realm of death was, to them, the land of their worst cap- 
tivity, where they came under the severest discipline of 
Him who is the Judge of His people, and where there 
could be no escape from the fire of His anger. To sup- 
pose there could be no change in them, under this pun- 
ishment, except an ever increasing hardening in wicked- 
ness, is to run counter to the whole spirit of its teaching 
concerning God's ways toward them, and to deny to 
Him and to His moral government the attributes which 
it is the very purpose of these Holy Scriptures to reveal. 









CHAPTER VI. 



THE LORD SHALL JUDGE HIS PEOPLE. 

These words announce a most important principle of 
the divine dealings. As quoted in Heb. x. 30, they ap- 
pear to be wholly vindicatory. But as they first occur 
in the Song of Moses, Deut. xxxii. 36, they are both 
vindicatory and redemptive. It is a prevalent and a 
striking misapplication of Scripture to wrest such solemn 
warnings as occur in the Book of Hebrews from their 
use as addressed to unfaithful Christians and apply them 
chiefly to unbelievers. It is the Lord's own people 
whom He shall judge, and they are warned that "It 
is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living 
God." 

But it would be a still more fearful thing to fall out of 
His hands. There is grace concealed in even such mina- 
tory passages. Our God is indeed a consuming fire. 
(Heb. xii. 29.) And yet the fire burns up our sins, 
which are our greatest enemies. And all His and our 
enemies are burnt up by it round about. (Ps. xcvii. 3.) 
There is always this double aspect in God's judgments. 
They vindicate His righteousness and punish evil-doers. 
But they tend also to deliver His people from the evils 
that make punishment necessary. Hence, it is a cause 
for deep thankfulness, as well as salutary dread, that a the 
Lord shall judge His people." And hence, as these 
words first occur in Moses* song, these two things are 
closely connected, Judgment and Deliverance. 

"For the Lord shall judge His people, and repent Him- 

35 



36 The Fire of God's Anger. 

self for His servants , when He seeth that their power is 
gone, and there is none shut up } or left. 

His judgments are a great deep. (Ps. xxxvi. 6.) And 
this Song shows how much more there is in them than 
penal visitation. They chastise His people indeed, but 
they reach beyond them over to their enemies, visible 
and invisible, and pursue their strange work until they 
smite even the last enemy, which is death. 

And thus we see how they maybe viewed as a "plead- 
ing of their cause." (Micah vii. 9.) We also see why this 
grateful aspect of the divine judgments is made so promi- 
nent in Scripture. In the Psalms, Zion, the nations, and 
the whole earth, animate and inanimate, are often sum- 
moned to " rejoice because of His judgments." 

These all-embracing judgments are based upon the 
principle that the righteousness of Jehovah, which requires 
that His people suffer for their sins, must vindicate itself 
also against their enemies who have tempted them to sin. 
The fire of His anger must burn against the created sys- 
tem in which their spiritual enemies find lodgment, and 
through whose laws and forces they pursue their work 
of sin and death. It is only in the light of considerations 
like these that we can perceive the deepest meaning of 
such words as these from Moses* Song : 

I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the 
remembrance of them to cease from among men : Were it not 
that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should 
behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, (margin,) 
Our high hand, and not the LORD, hath done all this." (vs. 26-27.) 

If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judg- 
ment ; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward 
them that hate me. (vs. 41.) 



The Lord Shall Judge His People. 37 

Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people : for He will avenge the 
blood of His servants, and will render vengeance to His adversa- 
ries, and will make expiation for His land, for His people, (v. 43.) 

Other Old Testament Scriptures bring to view this 
deep purpose to plead the cause of His people. Passing 
by the many passages which denounce judgments upon 
their human enemies, we refer to such as are directed 
more or less plainly against the invisible enemies to 
whom we have referred. The " gods " of the nations 
who are idols, but whose worship is the worship of 
demons (Lev. xvii. 7; Ps. cvi. 37), " He shall utterly 
abolish." (Isaiah ii. 1 8.) It will be permitted us to observe 
here that the subject of •■ demons " and the personal ex- 
istence of spiritual powers, good and evil, as connected 
with, and perhaps identical with, the forces of nature 
which idolaters deify, will be discussed further on in 
these studies. It will suffice to say at this point that all 
the Old Testament writers, and the people whom they 
addressed, believed in the existence of such demoniac 
powers. And these the judgments of God should reach. 
The gods of Egypt He would punish. (Jer. xlvi. 25.) 
Her idols should be destroyed. (Ezek. xxx. 13.) "The 
gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even 
they shall perish from the earth, and from under these 
heavens. " (Jer. x. 11.) Zephaniah ii. 11, declares God's 
purpose to " famish all the gods of the earth," in order 
that men everywhere, " even all the isles of the heathen," 
may worship Him. Isaiah (ch. xxiv.) gives an appalling 
picture of the tide of judgments which should overwhelm 
the whole earth, ending thus, "And it shall come to pass 
in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high 



38 The Fire of God's Anger. 

ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the 
earth. And they shall be gathered together, as prisoners 
are gathered in a pit, and shall be shut up in prison, and 
after many days shall they be visited." The phrase "the 
host of the high ones that are on high" is a Scriptural 
expression for powers that rule in the heavens. The an- 
tithesis in this passage requires this meaning. It may 
designate either the angelic powers, (Ps. cxlviii. 2,) or 
the stars, as the abode of those powers. (Isa. xl. 26) 
These powers are often viewed as the beneficent agents 
of God's government in Nature and the almoners of His 
bounty. (Ps. ciii. 20, 21.) But, as objects of worship, they 
draw away men's faith and affections from the living 
God. 

Hence, Israel was warned against this. " Lest thou 
lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest 
the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of 
heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve 
them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all 
nations under the whole heaven." (Deut. iv. 19.) In a 
similar passage (xvii. 3,) these objects are called " other 
gods." It does not enter into our purpose at this point, 
to delve into the mystery of this subject, but nothing is 
more plain than that Scripture views this present natural 
system as pervaded by living powers, which the ancients 
worshipped as divinities. It is plain also that while the 
agency of these powers is in the main beneficent, it has 
also its hostile side toward man. Not only was he cor- 
rupted by this worship and service of the creature. But 
its powers are the source to him of both physical and 
moral evil. The sun is the mediate source of life and 



The Lord Shall Judge His People. 39 

light to men. But the sun also smites by day and the 
moon by night. 

„• In the vast reservoir of Nature there would seem to be 
two kingdoms of forces, those which build up men in the 
strength and beauty and purity of embodied life, and 
those which inflame and debase and enfeeble and finally 
destroy this life. Whether there be indeed two hostile 
kingdoms, or whether these evils be due to the still 
untamed operation of forces otherwise beneficent, we 
cannot determine. But the point upon which we now 
insist is that such passages as Isa. xxiv. 21, bring before 
us the mystery, which the New Testament more 
distinctly affirms, that the judgments of God, 
in pleading the cause of His people, must finally 
reach and dethrone all powers in Nature which 
are hostile to man ; which have come in, in any way, as 
objects of worship, and as a vail between him and God, 
or which have perpetuated this reign of physical and 
moral evil under which he has been dragged down into 
the mire of sin and death. "Then the moon shall be con- 
founded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts 
shall reign in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem and before 
His ancients gloriously." (v. 23.) Too long has the true 
meaning of such passages been evaporated into the misty 
realm of figures. They affirm that deep truth of redemp- 
tion, of which we found hints in the Song of Moses, that 
this present cosmos, with the powers that rule in it, must 
be held to a responsibility for the evils that have come 
upon the human race. The judgments of God must 
reach and subdue and clarify this whole realm of " the 
world-rulers of this darkness." (Eph. vi. 12, R. V.) 



40 The Fire of God's Anger. 

It is only from this point of view that we can grasp 
the deep meaning of the Old Testament promises that 
Jehovah shall confound and defeat all our enemies. The 
Song of Moses refers to a chief enemy, head of these 
adversaries, whom the judgments of God must finally 
overtake and destroy. Many later passages refer to this 
triumph over "the prince of this world." (cosmos.) 

In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword 
shall punish leviathan, the piercing serpent, and He shall slay the 
dragon that is in the sea. Thus saith the Lord, even the captives 
of the mighty shall be taken away and the prey of the terrible 
shall be delivered ; for I will contend with him that contendeth 
with thee, and I will save thy children. (Ish. xxvii. i; xlix. 5.) 

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlast- 
ing arms ; and He shall thrust out the enemy from before thee 
and shall say, Destroy. (Deut. xxiii. 27.) 

The Psalms also abound in reference to " an enemy 
and an avenger," (xliv. 16,) strength to subdue whom 
should come through the channel of this feeble human 
race. (viii. 2.) This enemy reproaches God's people and 
blasphemes His name, (lxxiv. 10.) They go mourning 
under His oppression, (xlii. 9.) They shall be redeemed 
out of his hand. (cvii. 2.) We are aware that commenta- 
tors are accustomed to minify the meaning of such pas- 
sages, referring them to merely human enemies. Such 
interpretations accord with present low views of inspira- 
tion and fall in with the arrogant pretensions ofthe worldly 
mind, which demands that all that is supernatural in the 
Bible shall be reduced within the sphere of its ability to 
comprehend. The same " wisdom" would deny that 
there are any references to resurrection and a future life 
in the Old Testament, whereas the doctrine of redemp- 



The Lord Shall Judge His People. 41 

tion through resurrection is the key to the whole of it. 
Our generation seems almost as blind to this luminous 
feature of these old Scriptures as were the men of our 
Lord's day, which knew not the Scriptures nor the power 
of God, and who failed to see how Moses and all the 
prophets taught that the Christ must suffer and die and 
be raised again from the dead. We expect to show, as 
we advance, that a vail is before the eyes of those Bible 
readers who fail to see that it assumes that this world, 
or cosmos, as now constituted, is the seat of mighty in- 
visible foes, the roots of whose power strike deep down 
into the foundations of this present order, that the moral 
and physical evil of the world are but two sides of its one 
disorder, that it is therefore only a training ground for 
the human race, which must reach its perfection the other 
side of it, that God's hidden purpose is to overthrow all 
these enemies, and to deliver the whole creation from 
this bondage to corruption, to renew it and transform it 
into a new heavens and earth wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness. (Ish. lxv. 17.) This purpose requires specially the 
casting down of the great enemy from his seats of power. 
The Song of Moses and all God's holy prophets antici- 
pate this triumph. And so the Holy Spirit in Zacharias, 
(Luke i. 70-71,) sums up their teachings, " that we should 
be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that 
hate us." Even the judgment fires, of which the New 
Testament distinctly speaks, are foreshadowed in Moses' 
Song. (v. 22.) 

Such is the wide scope of that judgment which the 
Lord must execute for the deliverance of His people. In 
in all their affliction, He is afflicted. (Ish. lxiii. 9.) And 



42 The Fire of GocPs Anger. 

this affliction, as we have seen, comes from the pressure 
of more than human enemies. Invisible powers, the very 
system of nature, are also responsible. And, in judging 
His people, He must also judge them, "A fire goeth be- 
fore Him to burn up His enemies round about. His 
lightnings enlightened the world. The earth saw and 
trembled. The hills melt like wax at the presence of 
the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. 
The heavens declare His righteousness and all the peo- 
ple see His glory." (Ps. xcvii.) Highly poetic and figura- 
tive language ! we exclaim. True indeed, but it is not 
fiction. The vail of figures conceals the deepest facts. 
The fire of God's anger shall not cease its burning until 
it consumes all that is evil even in the foundations of the 
earth and down to the lowest hell. And all this strange 
work of judgment is in behalf of His people, who wait 
for His salvation. 

" Therefore saith jfehovah, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty 
One of Israel, Ah y I will ease me of mine adversaries and 
avenge me of mine enemies. ... Zion shall be redeemed 
with judgment and her captives (Young) with righteous- 
ness!' (Ish. i. 24, 27.) 

" Yea y in the way of thy judgments, Lord, have we 
waited for thee ; the desire of our soul is to thy name and 
to the remembrance of 'thee '." (xxvi. 8.) 

"For the Lord is a God of judgment ; blessed are all they 
that wait for Him? (xxx. 18.) 



CHAPTER VII. 



REDEMPTION THROUGH RESURRECTION. 

The Lord's triumph over His enemies would be fruit- 
less did it not require and issue in a triumph over death. 
Hence He must judge also this last enemy. He must 
rescue His captive people who have been carried away as 
prisoners into his realm. The Bible was written to re- 
veal this grace of God in providing redemption for man, 
the first fruits of which he now receives, but whose full 
results are achieved on the other side of death. Hence, 
if our view of the Old Testament promises is not carried 
forward to this point, we shall fall short of their mean- 
ing. Failure to give this principle its full value is a 
main cause of those mistifying and minifying glosses, 
which, under the specious plea of " spiritual sense," have 
so obscured the true meaning of God's Word, that multi- 
tudes have been led to doubt whether it is indeed His 
Word. A sad proof of the blinding effect of this process 
is the fact that " the hope of the resurrection of the 
dead " which God gave to the fathers (Acts xxvi : 6,) 
and of which all His holy prophets testify to those who 
have ears to hear, is taken out of a multitude of passages, 
in which it is embedded as the hidden kernel, and 
robbed of which, they lose their chief value. 

Old Testament passages which speak directly of judg- 
ment to be executed upon this last enemy are the follow- 
ing : " He will swallow up death in victory; and the 
Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces ; and 

43 



44 The Fire of God's Anger. 

the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all 
the earth : for the Lord hath spoken it.'' (Ish. xxv : 8.) 
The whole background of the portion of Isaiah's proph- 
ecy on which this splendid promise is projected is one of 
judgment. 

Hosea's prophecy is also burdened with premonitions 
of wrath to come, especially upon Ephraim, the schis- 
matic kingdom of Israel. The issue of these judgments 
would be death to a great portion of the people. But in 
the wonder working of God the pains of death become 
the pangs of parturition."* The prophet foresees " the 
breaking forth of children," and exclaims in Jehovah's 
name, " I will ransom them from the power of the grave 
(sheol) ; I will redeem them from death : O death, I will 
be thy plagues ; O grave, I will be thy destruction ; re- 
pentance shall be hid from mine eyes." f (Hosea xiii; 
14.) This promise explains that given in verse 9. " O 
Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thy 
help." The ultimate issue of Israel's self destruction was 
death. The grave covered all his hopes. But Jehovah 
who kills also makes alive. The honor of his name, His 



* This figure occurs also in Ish. xxvi; 17, 18, before a promise of resur- 
rection. 

f The readiness of interpreters to eliminate resurrection teaching from the 
plainest Old Testament passages is illustrated by a late writer in the Andover 
Review, (Nov. 1884.) After adopting an unusual and infelicitous rendering 
of the above passage, in face of the fact that the Lxx. and St. Paul, in his free 
quotation of it, (1st Cor. xv : 55) endorse the obvious view of it, he main- 
tains that it teaches the very opposite. His argument that such an outburst 
of promise is out of place in the midst of a context which speaks only of judg- 
ment amounts to nothing. The prophets abound in such instances. One is 
found indeed in this very chapter, and in the closest proximity to the passage 
in question, (vs. 9, 10.) 



Redemption Through Resurrection. 45 

gracious convenant, required that not even death itself 
should remove His people beyond His power to help. 
And so He rises to the dignity of this exultant promise 
to ransom His people even from the power of Sheol. It 
is a just principle that a great and luminous promise like 
this sheds light upon the interpretation of all others of 
its class. There is a large class of these passages which 
speak of redemption from death, individual and national 
And many, which promise deliverance to the captives, 
and the opening of prison doors to them that are bound, 
reveal their deepest meaning only as we view them as 
looking forward to a ransom from captivity to death. 
The name of Egypt (Mitzraim in Hebrew) signifies the 
i( place of straitness." It thus furnishes a suitable type 
for the empire of Death. And redemption from its bond- 
age stands out upon the pages of Scripture as a primal 
type of Jehovah's redemption of His people from Sheol.* 
We have before seen (Ch. iv.) that the dead in Sheol 
are viewed as prisoners, (Job iii. : 18,) shut up by bars in 
the pit, (xvii : 16.) The righteous, however, did not ex- 
pect to remain there, " But God will redeem my soul from 
the power of Sheol ; for He shall receive me." (Ps. 49 : 15.) 
In Psalm Ixxxviii : 10-12, we hear the sighing of these 
prisoners. " Wilt thou show wonders to the dead ? 
Shall the dead (rephaim) arise and praise thee? Shall 
thy loving kindness be declared in the grave? or thy 



* It is interesting to trace through the Old Testament its use of the term 
" captivity." It will be seen that it often describes a worse than human bond- 
age ; and that the promise to Israel and to other nations to • ' cause their cap- 
tivity to return and to have mercy upon them/' (Jer. xxxii : 7, 11, 26 : xlix : 
6, 39,) implies more than redemption from human slavery. It looks forward 
to their ransom from the power of Sheol. 



46 The Fire of God's Anger. 

faithfulness in destruction ? Shall thy wonders be known 
in the dark ? and thy righteousness in the land of forget- 
fulness?" Psalm lxxix : 10, n, is a prayer that God 
would avenge Himself upon the heathen who had filled 
His land with slaughter and requite the blood of His 
servants, " Let the sighing of the prisoners come before 
thee; according to the greatness of thy power preserve 
thou the children of death, " (margin.) So wide-spread 
was the work of death in this case that no vindication of 
Jehovah's name and people would suffice that did not 
provide for triumph, not only over their human enemies, 
but over death. He must hear the sighing of its prison- 
ers and loose their bonds. That this is the ultimate de- 
liverance sought is apparent from Ps. cii. The prophet 
declares that Jehovah will hear the prayer of the desti- 
tute and appear in glory to build up Zion. " This is 
written for a generation to come ; and the people which 
shall be created shall praise the Lord." (vs. 18.) This 
coming generation, a people to be created for the Lord's 
praise, seems to be the resurrected cliildren of death (vs. 
20, margin) spoken of afterwards. " For He hath looked 
down from the height of his sanctuary ; from heaven did 
the Lord behold the earth ; to hear the groaning of the 
prisoner: to loose the children of death;" to declare the 
name of the Lord in Zion, and His praise in Jerusalem." 
We are well aware that interpreters may readily reduce 
the meaning of such passages down to the low level of 
" things present" and deny that they refer at all to that 
transcendent order of things of which the resurrection 
of Christ was the pledge. But we are quite sure that 
any one who accepts that great fact as the focal point 



Redemption Through Resurrection. 47 

toward which all the lines of God's working in the past 
converge, and from which they sweep away into the ages 
to come, will not accept any interpretation of such ex- 
pressions in the Psalms and Prophets which does not 
view them as looking forward I, to the Messiah's victory 
over death; 2, to the rescue of His people from its 
bondage, and 3, to an ultimate recovery of the 
generations of mankind who have gone down as 
prisoners into its realm. 

Bondage in Egypt, captivity in Babylon and among all 
nations, stands out, no doubt, on the foreground of such 
passages. There is also a hidden reference to the spiritual 
darkness and bondage into which the people had fallen by 
reason of their sins, and a promise of quickening from 
this spiritual death. But the deliverance promised would 
be no message of mercy to the men to whom it was 
spoken, it would not meet the case, it would not execute 
the judgment written against all God's enemies, nor vin- 
dicate the honor of His name, did not these prophecies 
look forward to the ransom from Sheol of these very 
generations of men whom the wrath of their enemies and 
the justice of God had consigned to its gloomy prison. 

The 68th Psalm is a glowing anticipation of this deliv- 
erance by one who ascends on high, leading captivity cap- 
tive, and obtaining " gifts for men, yea for the rebellious 
also, that the Lord God might dwell among them." (vs. 
18.) " He that is our God is the God of salvation, and 
unto God the Lord belong the issues of death."* (The out- 



* Conant translates ■« God is to us a God for deliverances and to Jehovah 
the Lord belong ways of escape from death." 



48 The Fire of God's Anger. 

goings of death. — Young) This Lord over death shall 
" wound the head of his enemies," and bring again His 
people from Bashan, and from the depths of the sea, (vs. 
21, 22.) Bashan was a region on the further side ol 
Jordan, type of death. That this deliverance is more 
than that of an elect remnant, or even of the nation of 
Israel, is manifest from the scope of the whole Psalm, 
which celebrates a salvation for which all the kingdoms 
of the earth are invited to sing praises unto God, 
(vs. 32.) 

These promises of deliverance are both personal and 
national. Psalm cxlii is a resurrection Psalm, to be un- 
derstood first of the Messiah, but also of those in whose 
behalf He went down to death. The writer expresses 
his confidence that while no man "sought after his soul," 
(vs. 4, margin,) the Lord would be His portion in the 
land of the living and bring out his soul from prison } (ys. 7.) 
In Psalm cxliii, we hear the same complaint, " For the 
enemy hath persecuted my soul, he hath bruised my life 
to the earth; hath caused me to dwell in dark places as 
the dead of old." (vs. 3. — Young's Translation) We have 
the cry for deliverance, " Hear me speedily, O Lord : 
my spirit faileth : hide not thy face from me, for I am 
become like unto them that go down into the pit." (vs. 7, 
margin.) " Cause me to hear thy loving kindness in the 
morning (the time of awakening) for in thee do I trust." 
And then we have the confident expectation ; ■* For thy 
name's sake, O Lord, thou wilt quicken me ; in thy 
righteousness thou wilt bring my soul out of distress. In 
thy loving kindness thou wilt cut off mine enemies, and 
will destroy all the adversaries of my soul : for I am thy 



Redemption Through Resurrection. 49 

servant." (vs. n, 12, see Young's and Conanfs versions.) 
Psalm cxvi. records a similar experience, " Compassed 
me have the cords of death and the straits of Sheol have 
found me : Distress and sorrow I find, and in the name of 
the Lord I call : I pray thee, O Lord, deliver my soul 
.... for thou hast delivered my soul from death, 
mine eyes from tears, my feet from over-throwing. I 
walk* habitually before the Lord in the land of the liv- 
ing/ 7 (vs. 3-9, Young.) Whatever application these words 
may have to release from spiritual death, verse 1 5 makes 
it clear that the ultimate deliverance in view is from 
death in Sheol. For this must be the " death of His 
saints " which remains " precious in the eyes of the Lord,'' 
and rescue from this the reason for the thanksgiving* 
"Thou hast loosed my bonds," (vs. 16.) 

Without denying then that such passages, which 
abound in the Psalms, may be properly applied to spirit- 
ual quickening, for these two forms of death are one in 
essence, we are sure that their ultimate and highest 
meaning is seen only as they speak to us of resurrection. 

* By a common Hebrew idiom the future is viewed as present. 

4 



CHAPTER VIII. 



REDEMPTION THROUGH RESURRECTION. 

Passing on to the Prophets, we find many similar 
promises of release from a captivity, the roots of which 
lie in the realms of death. The promises, however, be- 
come less personal. The nation's bondage is more in 
view. But as we have already seen from Isaiah xxv, and 
Hosea xiii, only a ransom from Sheol can fully meet the 
case. Such a deliverance is proclaimed in Isaiah xxvi: 
14-19, a passage which speaks plainly of resurrection 
from death, as even rationalistic interpreters admit. The 
prophet had just declared that the judgments, by which 
Jehovah would restore His people and bless all nations, 
would be carried on to this climax, — " He will swallow 
up death in victory/' (xxv: 8.) A careful reading of 
the whole of the magnificent prophecy, (Chs. xxv.-xxvii.), 
shows that there is before the writer's mind the burden 
of woes under which, not only Israel, but all the earth's 
inhabitants suffer. And the deliverance foreseen is as 
wide as the misery. And yet it comes " in the way of 
judgments." (xxvi : 8.) Only in this way will " the in- 
habitants of the world learn righteousness. ,, (v. 9.) If 
favor be shown to the wicked, he will not learn right- 
eousness, (v. 10.) Therefore Jehovah's hand must be 
lifted up against him in judgment. The fire of His 
enemies must devour them. (v. 1 1.) They must go down 
to death. Their condition is thus described. " Dead, 
they shall not live; Rephaim (shades) they shall not 

50 



The Fire of God's Anger. 51 

rise: therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, 
and made all their memory to perish.'' (v. 14.) This 
removal of all the ends of the Earth * had enlarged the 
nation of Israel, that is, it had given it wide scope for the 
accomplishment of its mission, (v. 15.) At the same 
time it had compelled these banished ones to cry in 
their trouble unto the Lord for relief, (v. 16.) The mis- 
sion of Israel to the world was Messianic. That nation 
was raised up to bring to mankind the salvation for 
which it cries. Like a woman with child the nation had 
been pregnant with this great boon. Its sorrows had 
been its parturition pangs, (v. 17) And yet it had not 
wrought deliverance in the earth, neither for itself nor 
for the nations. "The inhabitants of the world had not 
fallen," that is they had not been subdued to Israel's 
God. (v. 18.) And then comes the announcement of re- 
demption for Israel, whose mission had ended in failure, 
and for mankind, through resurrection. " Thy dead 
shall live, my dead body they shall arise," The Lord 
here asserts His property in them, foreshadowing His 
identification with them in Christ, who went down to 
death with and for them. The ransom from death of 
His people, the first fruits, should be as dew upon the 
dust of the earth in which all the dead lie buried. 
"Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust: for thy dew is 
as the dew of herbs (Heb. "lights," i. e. vivifying dew). 
And the land of the Rephaim thou wilt cause to fall." f 



* That is, of its inhabitants into Sheol. The italics in the English ver- 
sion obscure the sense. 

f The English version reads " And the earth shall cast out the dead." 
The form of the Hebrew verb and the collocation of the words are such 
that either rendering is admissible. 



52 The Fire of God's Anger. 

(v. 19.) The verb is the same as at the close of v. 18. 
Hence, Young gives it a similar rendering. The idea 
is that, while the inhabitants of the world had not fallen 
before Israel and Israel's Lord, yet, as captives in Sheol, 
they should be forced to confess His name. The resur- 
rection grace and power which should some day reach 
Israel, would finally subdue and rescue them. This 
deliverance, however, could only be in the way of judg- 
ment: and hence Jehovah invites His people to shelter 
themselves from the coming storm of His indignation, 
which should beat upon the earth's inhabitants, the issue 
of which would be that the earth should disclose her 
blood and no more cover her slain, (vs. 20, 21.) How 
deep this work of judgment would be the next verse 
brings to view — " In that day the Lord with His sore 
and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan, the 
piercing serpent: even Leviathan that crooked serpent; 
and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. ,, (xxvii : 1 .) 
We have already seen that this passage foretells judg- 
ment upon " him that hath the power of death, that is 
the devil." The whole scope of the prophecy accords 
with what we have in view in this essay, which is to show 
that, from Moses onward, all his holy prophets foretell a 
triumph over His enemies and over death and hell which 
shall bring salvation to Israel and to all mankind. In 
the passage we have been reviewing we detect a principle, 
more fully unfolded in the New Testament and of which 
we shall have much to say hereafter, that this salvation 
reaches first His people, who are made the mediums of 
wider blessing. We shall also see that it has respect to 
previous character, and that it is a harvest in which every 



The Fire of God's Anger. 53 

man must reap as he has sown. But at this point we 
fasten attention simply upon the great principle that, 
guilty as all men are on account of sin and worthy of 
death, there is a class of spiritual enemies behind them, 
involved in the guilt, who must share in its punishment, 
and for whom there is preparing a final overthrow that 
shall bring to all men at least this blessing, rescue 
from the power of death. The dead stock of Israel 
" shall blossom and bud and fill the face of the world 
with fruit." (v. 6.) 

We urge then our readers to bring to bear upon the 
interpretation of the numerous passages of this class 
these considerations. 

1. Israel and all nations, by the righteous judgments 
of God, have been consigned to Sheol. They suffer 
under this worst of all captivities, bondage to death. 

2. God has wrought for them a redemption which pro- 
ceeds in the way of judgment upon themselves, their 
enemies, seen and unseen, and over the empire of death 
which holds them captive. The meaning of the word 
"captivity" is at once broadened in this view. "The 
perishing in the land of Assyria and the outcasts in the 
land of Egypt " (v. 13) are at once seen to be typical of 
the victims of a real and lasting captivity in the land of 
death, for whom " the great trumpet shall be blown." 
The people "robbed and spoiled," "snared in holes," 
" hid in prison houses," " a prey whom nonedelivereth," 
"a spoil, of whom none saith, restore," (Is. xlii: 22) 
are the people who are bound in the prison-house of 
death. And to such comes the promise (xliiis 1), 
" But now, thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, 



54 The Fire of God's Anger. 

and he that formed thee, O Israel, fear not : for I have 
redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name ; thou 
art mine." Neither the waters nor the floods nor the 
flames should destroy them. (v. 2.) a I even I, am the 
Lord ; and beside me there is no Saviour.'' We again 
repeat that we have no desire to strip these passages of 
their spiritual meaning, nor deny to them any reference 
to Israel's spiritual bondage and subsequent conversion. 
Spiritual death, as the New Testament constantly affirms, 
is one in essence with bodily death. The last is a deeper 
and more fatal bondage than the first, but the capti- 
vity and degradation are the same in kind. We main- 
tain, however, that we shall fall far short of their meaning 
if we limit these passages to the lesser evil, and see in 
them no promise of redemption from the greater. In- 
deed, we shall mistake in our whole interpretation of 
the Old Testament, if the light that guides us is not that 
of "the hope of the resurrection of the dead." It is 
only on the other side of death that the splendid 
promises that glow along these pages of Isaiah can find 
fulfilment For the men to whom they were made are 
long since dead. They never realized the promised sal- 
vation. They " died without the sight." Israel missed 
the blessing himself, and failed to become the instrument 
of it to all mankind. But Israel, (and this name includes 
the Messiah, the First Born of that princely seed 
which has power with God and prevails)^ on the other 
side of death and in the power of resurrection, shall 
realize and accomplish this deliverance. Plain do these 
promises become if we allow them their full and proper 
scope. 



Redemption Through Resurrection. 55 

Another such occurs in Is. xlix: 5-10. Jehovah 
commissions His " servant " to raise up the tribes of 
Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel, and 
to be His salvation unto the end of the earth, to be a 
covenant of the people, to raise up the earth, to cause to 
inherit the desolate heritages ; " To say to the prisoners 
go forth, to them that are in darkness, be uncovered. 
They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be 
in all high places. They shall not hunger nor thirst ; 
neither shall the heat nor sun smite them: for He that 
hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs 
of water shall He guide them." The quotation of the 
latter verse in the Revelation (viii: 16,) makes it clear 
that the promised deliverance reaches beyond the grave, 
and harmonizes with all that we have said concerning 
the meaning of the u captivity " so often alluded to. The 
unbound " prisoners " are the released from Sheol. They 
are again referred to in the 25 th verse. The question of 
the possibility of such a deliverance is raised in the 24th 
verse. " Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the 
lawful captive delivered ? " The next verse replies, 
"But thus saith Jehovah. Even the captives of the 
mighty shall be taken away, and the prey of the terrible 
shall be delivered : for I will contend with him that con- 
tendeth with thee, and I will save thy children/' 

Again we say, if we limit such words to release from 
Babylon, or even from spiritual bondage, we shall fall 
far short of their meaning. " When God says so much 
He cannot mean so little." No release which does not 
provide for and include the exiles in Sheol, where the 
vast majority of the nation were gathered, and which 



56 The Fire of God's Anger. 

does not wound the head of their chief enemy and 
avenger, could meet the case or fulfil the terms of the 
promise. In the next chapter we hear Jehovah again 
declaring that though the heavens and earth must fade 
away and " they that dwell therein must die in like 
manner" * yet " His salvation shall be forever (unto all 
generations, v. 8. R. V.) and His righteousness shall not 
be abolished." (li : 6.) He stretched forth the heavens 
and laid the foundations of the earth. The huge grind- 
ing wheels of nature, under which all the earth's inhabi- 
tants are ground out in death, are subject to His will who 
is Lord of Creation and of Life. And therefore He asks 
exultingly, why His people should fear continually every 
day the fury of the oppressor, as if he were able to de- 
stroy. "Andwhereisthefury ofthe oppressor? Thecaptive 
exile hasteneth to.be loosed, that he die not in the pit, 
nor that his bread should fail." (vs. 13, 14.) That is, he 
dreads death, as if this enemy would put him beyond the 
help of even the Maker of heaven and earth. And so 
Jehovah appeals to His former wonder-working in behalf 
of his people, smiting Rahab, (Egypt, type of Sheol,) 
wounding the dragon, and drying up the sea. (v. 10.) 
And so they need not fear that even death can put them 
beyond the redeeming power of the Lord, their God, 
" the Lord of hosts is His name " (v. 15.) 

*Or like gnats (margin R. V.). 



CHAPTER IX. 



REDEMPTION THROUGH RESURRECTION. 

[Continued.) 

In the prophecy of Jeremiah we find ample illustrations 
of the same principles of divine dealing which we have 
traced out in that of Isaiah, and which were so signifi- 
cantly announced in the Song of Moses. " The spirit oi 
judgment and the spirit of burning " by which the Lord 
should purge away the sin of His people (Ish. iv : 4.) 
had begun to burn fiercely against them in Jeremiah's 
lime. A pious remnant humbled itself under the mighty 
hand of God during these judgments. We hear their 
prayer, u O Lord, correct me, only in judgment: not in 
thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing." (Jer. x: 24.) 
The mass of the people, however, were unrepentant, and 
were either destroyed by the sword and by pestilence, or 
carried into captivity. The prophet's eyes ran down with 
tears, because the Lord's flock was carried away captive, 
(xiii : 17.) He intercedes with Him for His stricken 
people. The Lord reveals to Him that the people must 
not only go into captivity, but that in their own land and 
the land of their enemies, they should die of grievous 
deaths and be consumed, (xvi: 4-13.) Before He could 
interfere for their deliverance He must " recompense 
their iniquity and their sin double." (vs. 18.) And yet 
He promises that in days to come He would prove Him- 
self the Living One who could rescue even from such 
bondage and death. " Behold I will send for many 
fishers, saith Jehovah, and they shall fish them ; and after 

67 



58 The Fire of God's Anger. 

will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them 
from every mountain and from every hill, and out of the 
holes of the rocks." (vs. 16.) A mere promise of national 
restoration, we say. But no national restoration in 
the past, nor any possible restoration of some future 
generation of Jews, can ever fulfill these prophecies, 
either in letter or spirit. The generations to whom these 
promises were made were carried away into a worse 
captivity than that of Babylon. They went down to 
death. Only a conqueror of death could meet their case 
and bring them release. From this point of view alone 
can we get the full meaning of such passages as these. 
" Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith 
Jehovah ; neither be dismayed, O Israel : for lo, I will 
save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their 
captivity; and Jacob shall return and shall be in rest, 
and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid." (xxx : 10.) 
And this by a judgment upon their enemies: 

" Therefore all they that devour thee shall be devoured ; and all 
thine adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; and 
they that spoil thee shall be a spoil, and all that prey upon thee 
will I give for a prey. For I will restore health unto thee, and I 
will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord ; because they called 
thee an outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after." 
(vs. 16, 17.) " Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and de- 
clare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will 
gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock. For the 
Lord hath redeemed Jacob* and ransomed him from the hand of 
him that was stronger than he. . . . And they shall not sor- 
row any more at all." (xxxi : 10-12.) "Thus saith the Lord; a 
voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping ; Rachel 
weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, 
because they were not. Thus saith the Lord ; Refrain thy voice 



Redemption Through Resurrection. 59 

from weeping, and thine eyes from tears : for thy work shall be re- 
warded, saith the Lord ; And they shall come again from the land 
of the enejny. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that 
thy children shall come again to their own border." (xxxi : 15, 16.) 
It is at least certain, in respect to the limited and local 
application of this prophecy by St. Matthew (ii : 17, 18.) 
to the slaughtered infants at Bethlehem, that the land of 
the enemy from which they should return must be the 
land of death. It is certain also that the captivity to 
which the bulk of the nation was at this time delivered 
was a captivity to death. (See chs. xvi: 4; xxxiii : 5; 
xxxii : 36.) And therefore the repeated promise to re- 
gather them, to " cause their captivity to return," (xxxiii : 
44.) to bring to them " health and cure " and u reveal 
unto them the abundance of peace and truth," to do this 
for both Judah and Israel, and to restore and " build 
them as at the first," to cleanse and pardon them, to re- 
pair all their desolations, and fill their cities with joy and 
praise to Him "whose mercy endureth forever" (xxxii: 
3-1 1.) must reach to the captives in the realms of death. 
Nothing short of this would fulfill such promises, nor 
perform "the good thing which He hath promised unto 
the house of Israel and to the house of Judah," (vs. 14.) 
to a cause their captivity to return and have mercy upon 
them." -(vs. 26.) The most meagre criticism must fail to 
find such words justified by the paltry return from exile 
in Babylon. Nothing in the subsequent history of Israel 
has answered to them. To suppose that Israel stands 
hare as a mere type of the Christian church and that the 
Blessings promised him find their fulfilment in the spirit- 
ual blessings which have come to Abraham's tl spiritual 
seed," is to suppose that Jehovah's words do not mean 



60 The Fire of God's Anger. 

what they say, and that He mocked His ancient people 
with the promise of blessings which were to be bestowed 
on some one else. 

There is, no doubt, truth to be gained in interpreting 
such Old Testament words as pledges of spiritual blessing. 
But this may be had without excluding their plain liter- 
al meaning. The mistake of both lt literalist " and 
" spiritualist " in their interpretations of Scripture has 
been that one assumes that his system of interpretation 
necessarily excludes the other. Whereas both may be 
true. The Bible comprehends more of truth than any 
of us have yet grasped. 

We might trace through the prophecy of Ezekiel the 
same threatenings of judgment and promises of restora- 
tion. We notice, however, but one passage which con- 
spicuously illustrates the danger, of which we have just 
spoken, of missing the real intent of a passage by a process 
of " spiritualization " which empties the words of their ob- 
vious meaning. The 36th chapter, after specifying the sins 
of the house of Israel and their consequent punishment, af- 
firms that Jehovah, for His own name's sake, will cleanse 
and restore them. In the 37th chapter, He gives to the 
prophet a vision of a valley of dry bones, the design of 
which was to show him, and through him the people, 
how such promises of restoration could be fulfilled to a 
people the vast majority of whom were already dead. He 
sees a skeleton multitude rise up out of death, and made 
to live by the animating breath of Jehovah. He is told 
that these bones represent the whole house of Israel, 
whose complaint was " Our bones are dried, and our 
hope is lost : we are clean cut off." The prophet is then 



Redemption Tl trough Resurrection. 61 

commanded to assure them that not even death can de- 
feat Jehovah's purpose or annul the least of his promises. 
He is the Conqueror of death. 

" Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord 
God ; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause 
you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of 
Israel. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have open- 
ed your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your 
graves, and shall put my spirit in you and ye shall live, and I shall 
place you in your own land ; then shall ye know that I, Jehovah, 
have spoken it and performed it, saith the Lord." 

And then follows the promise to reunite the severed 
fragments of the nation into one people in the land, and 
to gather their captives from among all nations and on 
every side, to purify them, to make an everlasting cove- 
nant of peace with them, to set His sanctuary in the 
midst of them forevermore. M My dwelling place also 
shall be with them ; yea I will be their God, and they 
shall be my people.'' All these closing features enter 
into St. John's sublime description of the new heaven 
and earth. (Rev. xxi : 1-4.) This fact of itself proves that 
the prophecy, as its terms imply, has to do with post-re- 
surrection scenes and connects itself with " the times of 
the restitution of all things." The re-settlement of some 
subsequent generation of Israel in Palestine, some twenty- 
five or more centuries later in the world's history, would 
not fulfill it to the men to whom it was spoken. A word 
of promise to me is not fulfilled by a good thing bestow- 
ed upon some very remote descendant. Still less would 
there be any comfort to me in the thought that I stand 
merely as the type of a class of some other persons who 
are to receive the blessing. God's words are too true 



62 The Fire of GocPs Anger. 

and plain to admit of any such belittleing. They must 
mean here, therefore, what all true Israelites have always 
understood them to mean, that, however death may seem 
to have triumphed over Jehovah's people, to have made 
void His covenant and annulled His promises, He will 
avenge their cause upon even this last and greatest 
enemy, and bring them back in triumph even from the 
power of Sheol, and perform every good thing He has 
spoken concerning them. 

We have already seen that the Lord, through Hosea, 
gives a promise, if possible more distinct than this through 
Ezekiel, to do this very thing, (xiii : 14.) " I will ran- 
som them from the power of Sheol ; I will redeem them 
from death ; O death, I will be thy plagues ; O Sheol, I 
will be thy destruction." Nor is the promise by either 
prophet restricted to a pious remnant. It is given by 
Ezekiel to " the whole house of Israel" to the schismati- 
cal section as well as to Judah. Hosea deals throughout 
with an Israel of the present as well as of the future. It is 
the Israel who had " fallen by his iniquity/' and " de- 
stroyed himself," whose # backsliding was to be healed 
(xiv : 4.) who was to be freely loved, and from whom 
God's anger was turned away. There is no possible 
escape from the conclusion, if the language of Scripture 
is to be allowed its proper meaning, that the promises of 
God to Israel require that, after adjudging them to death 
on account of their sins, and after their long and bitter 
bondage in that dark realm, He shall interfere to rescue 
them from the hands of this enemy and avenger, and so 
bring them into a new relation to Himself of life and 
blessing, in which He can make good to them all His 
sure Word. 



Redemption Through Resurrection. 63 

Some of our readers will be repelled from this con- 
clusion because it seems to require their acceptance of 
the whole system of millenarianism ; and they have al- 
ready prejudged this as absurd and impossible. The 
mistakes made by many advocates of that system have 
brought it into a disrepute which it does not deserve. 
We shall have occasion hereafter to notice these. We 
observe at this point, however, that the restoration of 
Israel, which we have found to be taught in the Old 
Testament, is quite different from that looked for by 
many advocates of that system. They concern them- 
selves largely about Israel's pre-resurrection destiny and 
the present hiding places of the lost tribes. Our view 
affirms that, while the living remnant of the nation is 
under the eye of God and has its place in His plans for 
the future, the most of Israel are in the prison house of 
death. It is from thence that God will search them out 
and bring them. The glorious destiny in reserve for 
them lies on the other side of death. These are post- 
resurrection promises upon their face. And all our 
views of Scripture and of things to come will be greatly 
simplified by regarding them as such. 



CHAPTER X. 



CAPTIVITY CAPTIVE. 

We shall not detain our readers by any minute ex- 
amination of the minor prophets. Their testimony, 
while it confirms, would only repeat that already given. 
We cannot forbear, however, to cite these few passages 
which we ask them to read in the light of the truth 
we have already gained. 

"Sing, O daughter of Zion ; shout, O Israel ; be glad and 
rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord 
hath taken away thy judgments, He hath cast out thine enemy : 
the King of Israel, Jehovah, is in the midst of thee : thou shalt 
not see evil any more, . . The Lord thy God in the midst of 
thee is mighty ; He will save, He will rejoice over thee with joy ; 
He will rest in His love, He will joy over thee with singing. 
Mine afflicted from the appointed place I will gather ; from thee 
they have been bearing for her sake reproach.* Behold I will undo 
all who afflict thee at that time, and will save the halting one, 
and the driven out ones I will gather, and set them for a praise 
and a name in all the land of their shame. At that time will I 
bring you again, even in the time that I gather you ; for I will make 
you a name and a praise among all people of the earth, when I turn 
back your captivity before your eyes, saiththe Lord (Zeph. iii: 14-20.) 

"And He shall speak peace unto the heathen : and His domin- 
ion shall be from sea even to sea, and from the rivers even to the 
ends of the earth. As for thee also, because of the blood of thy 
covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein 
is no water. Turn ye to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope ; 
even to-day do I declare that I will render double unto thee." 
(Zech. ix: 11, 12.) f 

^Young's Version. 

f Jeremy Taylor, in his Life and Leaih of the Holy Jesus, C. xvi, in 
referring to this passage, speaks ot the dead "whom the prophet 
Zechariah calls «piisoners of hope.' " 

* 64 



Captivity Captive. 65 

" And I will hiss for them, and gather them ; for I have re- 
deemed them : and they shall increase as they have increased, 
and I will sow them among the people ; and they shall remember 
me in far countries ; and they shaft live with their children and 
turn again." (x: 8, 9.) 

It is, of course, an easy matter to find an explanation 
for all this class of passages lower than the one we have 
given. Most readers are satisfied to regard them as 
prophetic either of Israel's future return to their own 
land or of their future conversion. Our extended exam- 
ination, however, has shown that, whatever of prelim- 
inary blessing they convey, the remote and final 
release from captivity to which they refer is Israel's 
rescue from bondage in Sheol, to which the vast major- 
ity of them have been consigned. All their other cap- 
tivities were but types of this. And all minor deliv- 
erences foreshadow this. We shall not fully penetrate 
the meaning of Old Testament prophecy until we dis- 
cover that this great promise underlies the whole, and 
that behind the veil of these passages, which seem to 
deal only with the temporal fortunes of the chosen 
people, there is concealed the secret of God's covenant 
to perform the mercy promised to their fathers, which 
the death they must needs suffer for their sins seemed 
to make forever impossible. We shall only skim the 
surface of these great promises until we learn that the 
"outcasts" of Israel so often referred to by the prophets, 
and for whom the great trumpet is to be blown (Is. 
xxvii: 13), are in reality, as the word signifies, the 
perished ones.* The true "outcasts in the land of 

*The corresponding word in the Septuagint is always 6ltto\6v^vol. It occurs 
twice in this verse. See also Young's version. The Hebrew word means 
literally the ■« thrust down ones." 

5 



66 The Fire of God's Anger. 

Egypt" (type of Sheol) are the lost ones in the realm 
of death. 

It remains for us to observe further that ultimate 
release from captivity to death is promised also to the 
Gentile nations which were not within the pale of 
Israel's covenant. Thus, for example, we find Isaiah 
coupling Egypt and Assyria with Israel in a promise of 
blessing. "In that day shall Israel be the third with 
Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of 
the land : Whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, say- 
ing, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the 
work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance." (xix : 
24, 25.) 

So also Jeremiah, after denouncing judgments upon 
the nations who were enemies of Israel, declares, "Yet 
will I bring again the captivity of Moab in the latter 
days, saith the Lord. Thus far is the judgment of Moab." 
(xlviii: 47.) "And afterward I will bring again the 
captivity of the children of Ammon, saith the Lord." 
(xlix : 6.) "But it shall come to pass in the latter days, 
that I will bring again the captivity of Elam, saith the 
Lord/' (vs. 39.) We read (Ezek. xvi), concerning 
Sodom and Samaria that inasmuch as Israel had 
become as vile as they, they would be restored from 
their captivity, with Israel's restoration. 

"When I shall bring again their captivity, and the captivity of 
Sodom and her daughters, and the captivity of Samaria and her 
daughters, then will I bring again the captivity of thy captives in 
the midst of them. . . When thy sisters, Sodom and her 
daughters, shall return to their former estate, and Samaria and 
her daughters shall return to their former estate, then thou and 
thy daughters shall return to your former estate. . . Then 



Captivity Captive. 67 

thou shalt remember thy ways and be ashamed when thou shalt 
receive thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger ; and I will give 
them unto thee for daughters, but not by thy covenant. And I 
will establish my covenant with thee ; and thou shalt know that I 
am the Lord : that thou mayest remember and be confounded . . . 
when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith 
the Lord." 

Whatever might have been true of Samaria, there 
was no captivity under which Sodom was then held but 
captivity to death. It had been utterly destroyed, "suf- 
fering the vengeance of eternal fire." (Jude 7.) No 
recovery could therefore reach its people except it 
reached them in the realms of death. The release 
referred to must be granted to them as "spirits in 
prison." Under the administrations of the Messiah, 
in whom "all shall be made alive/' even the men of 
Sodom should be at last set free. 

We thus see why, in the Song of Moses, the Gentiles 
were invited to "rejoice with His people.'' That song, 
as we have seen, looks forward to such far reaching 
triumphs over death, and such riddance of this created 
system of the enemies who have put upon it the yoke of 
"bondage to corruption" (Rom. viii: 19-21), that all 
mankind, living and dead, must share in the blessings 
of that redemption. All shall at last be freed from 
captivity to death. 

We are aware that it is the custom of interpreters to 
find some way of escape from the plain meaning of 
such passages. The most plausible of these explana- 
tions is that which makes these names, Egypt, Assyria, 
Moab, Sodom, etc. stand as symbols for various classes 
of mankind, all of whom were to be reached by the gospel. 



G8 The Fire of Go(P$ Anger. 

There is a sense indeed in which we are now sur- 
rounded and live in the midst of Sodom and Egypt 
and Babylon. The New Testament carries over these 
names and applies them to systems which exist, some 
of them in towering proportions, to the end of the age. 
Still further, it may be truly said that all these systems 
hold men in bondage. Every form of Old Testament 
captivity has its correspondence now in the various 
forms in which the god of this world leads men captive 
at his will. Some are in bondage in "Egypt," which 
represents the world as dominated by natural laws. 
These compel men to yield them service above 
the claim of the living God of Nature, debasing them 
into a hard, grinding, pitiless slavery to natural appe- 
tites and necessities and so treading them into the mire 
of sin and death. Others are in bondage in "Assyria," 
the representative of social progress and world- con- 
quest. They are inflamed by a desire for expansion 
and acquisition, slaves of worldly ambition, worshippers 
of Mammon. This is also a cruel and often a fatal 
bondage. Others, and especially multitudes in Christen- 
dom, are enslaved in "Babylon,'' type of that mixed 
system of* world-religion, which seeks to throw the 
charms and sanctions of religion over the pleasures and 
pursuits and ambitions of the world, worshipping Mam- 
mon under the forms of godliness, and prostituting the 
church to. the ends of its own lust for wealth and domin- 
ion. This is a more seductive bondage but no less 
dangerous. We may admit then a reference to all these 
forms of spiritual bondage which still dominate man- 
kind in the prophetic promises which proclaim "deliv- 



Captivity Captive. 69 

erance to the captives and the opening of the prison 
doors to them that are bound." 

But we shall greatly mistake if we cramp and limit 
these words of Holy writ to this region. Spiritual 
emancipation is but a "first-fruits " blessing (Rom. viii. 
23), the possession of which leads us to long for "the 
redemption of the body." Nothing short of this can 
give man that place of freedom and ownership and 
lordship in creation, to which he was destined when 
God made him in His own image. These Old Testa- 
ment promises, therefore, must reach on to this con- 
summation, or the major part of the blessing to which 
they give title is never conveyed. They certainly 
require that all the past generations of mankind, in 
due time and order, shall be " made alive." This 
gift of life, indeed, does not exempt from judgment. 
There is a "resurrection unto judgment." Only men in 
Christ, whether in this world or the world to come, are 
set free from judgment. It must pursue, even to a 
second death, those who persistently reject Him. All 
God's truth concerning judgment for sin must be firmly 
held along with all He promises concerning redemption. 
But the one must not nullify the other. He has prom- 
ised to Abraham that in his seed all the families of the 
earth shall be blessed. And hence David could sing, 
" All nations whom thou hast made shall come and wor- 
ship before thee, O Lord ; and shall glorify thy name ; 
for thou art great and doest wondrous things : Thou art 
God alone." (Ps. cxiv: 9.) Are not the dead genera- 
tions of mankind a part of "all the families of the earth ? " 
By what right or reason can we exclude them ? Are 



70 The Fire of Gods Anger. 

not they a part of the "all nations whom thou hast 
made ? " To shut them out from these promises is to 
deny that He is the God of the dead as well of the liv- 
ing. It is to ignore the deepest truth in His Word and 
in His redemption plan. 



CHAPTER XL 



UNQUENCHABLE FIRE. 

We have seen that there are two radical principles of 
the divine dealing with mankind unfolded in the Old 
Testament. 

1. The principle of far reaching judgment \ rendering 
to every man according to his work, shutting up the 
wicked as prisoners in sheol, extending itself also to the 
diabolic and cosmical enemies who have put this yoke of 
bondage to sin upon man, and so merging into 

2. A second principle of far reaching redemption ; pro- 
viding forgiveness and salvation for all men, securing to 
all at least a ransom from the power of death, and free- 
ing the system of creation to which man belongs from 
the yoke of those enemies which, to both, has been a 
bondage to corruption. 

We come next to see that in all this strange work if our 
God is a consuming fire." 

In our study of the song of Moses we found (vs. 22) 
that this deep work of judgment is represented as a fire 
of God's anger, burning down to the lowest hell. We 
found there also an unmistakable reference to a future 
renovation of this natural system, which is viewed as 
under the yoke of sin with man, through the agency of 
fire. We have now to observe that " fire " is a common 
Scripture term for these judgments, through the whole 
range of them, and that the one feature, common to them 
all, is destruction, which is not extinction. Fire is the 
most rapid consumer of human lives and of creature 

71 



72 The Fire of God's Anger. 

forms. But slower destructive agents, such as famine 
and disease, consume them also. Hence (Deut. iv. 24) 
in the judgments threatened against Israel, Jehovah is 
declared to be a "consuming fire." So also in the judg- 
ments by which He was to go before Israel to disposess 
and destroy their enemies, He would be a u consuming 
fire." "A fire goeth before Him and burneth up all his 
enemies round about. ,, (Ps. xcvii. 3.) War, famine, 
pestilence, death, all destructive agencies are included in 
this term. " Before Him went the pestilence, and aburn- 
ing flame goeth out at His feet." (Hab. iii. 5.) In Isaiah 
the special judgments by which Jehovah shall accom- 
plish the deliverance of His people are thus described : 
" The hand of the Lord shall be known toward His ser- 
vants, and His indignation toward His enemies. For, 
behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with His 
chariots like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, 
and His rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by 
His sword will the Lord plead with all flesh : and the 
slain of the Lord shall be many." (Ch. lxvi. 14-17.) 
In verse 24, these " slain of the Lord " are represented as 
dead " carcasses." And the remediless destruction which 
has overtaken them is thus described : " For their worm 
shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched ; and 
they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." It is only by 
ingrafting upon this passage our pre-conceived opinions 
that we can make it teach an eternity of torment for 
these dead transgressors. The picture is that of thickly 
strewn dead corpses, upon which the worm and the fire 
feed with a destructive gnawing which nothing can ar- 
rest. 



Unquenchable Fire. 73 

A similar scene of judgment is described in the 34th 
Chapter, in which, although the land of Idumea, or 
Edom, is mentioned as the special object of Jehovah's 
anger, His indignation is upon all nations and the pro- 
phetic vision reaches forward to the great day of His 
wrath. " For it is the day of the Lord's vengeance, and 
the year of recompenses for the controversy of Zion. 
And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and 
the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof 
shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched 
night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up forever; 
from generation to generation it shall lie waste ; none 
shall pass through it forever and ever. . . . And He 
shall stretch upon it the line of confusion and the stones 
of emptiness." (vs. 8-1 1.) Here, not only a people, but 
a whole territory, is represented as consumed under the 
quenchless fire of God's anger. This passage is specially 
to be observed as determining the Old Testament import 
of the similar terms employed in the Apocalypse. 

A similar use of the term "fire that cannot be quenched" 
is frequent in Jeremiah. It is used to describe the judg- 
ments threatened against His own land and people. 
l< Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Behold, mine an- 
ger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, 
upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the 
field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn 
and shall not be quenched.'' (vii. 20.) "And I will 
cause thee to serve thine enemies in the land which thou 
knowest not ; for ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, 
which shall burn forever." (xviii. 4.) " Lest my fury go 
out like fire, and burn that none can quench it." (xxi. 12.) 



74 The Fire of God's Anger. 

So also Ezekiel. " Thus saith the Lord God ; Behold, 
I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every 
green tree in thee, and every dry tree ; the flaming flame 
shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the 
north shall be burned therein. And all flesh shall see 
that I the Lord have kindled it ; it shall not be quenched.'' 
(xx. 47.) In the 38th Chapter we have a vision similar 
to the one already noticed in Isaiah lxvi., in which the 
final decisive judgments by which Jehovah shall deliver 
His people are described. Judgment is visited upon 
Gog and his armies, and all the powers of nature are 
engaged in its execution ; earthquake, the sword, pesti- 
lence, great hailstones, fire and brimstone. The land be- 
comes one vast sepulchre. This vision also reaches on 
to the terrors of that final consummation, which shall be 
a day of birth-anguish in creation as well as for man- 
kind.* 

It is not necessary to trace the same forms of expres- 
sion through the minor prophets. The language of 
Zephaniah (iii. 8.) condenses their testimony. " For all 
the earth shall be devoured with the fire of myjealousy.' , 
It is summed up in the last book of Old Testament pro- 
phecy. " For, behold the day cometh, that shall burn as a 
furnace, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, 
shall be stubble : And the day that cometh shall burn 
them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them 
neither root nor branch." (Mai. iv. 1.) 

From these extended quotations, which might be easily 
multiplied, it is manifest that God's consuming anger 



*See also Ezek. xxi. 31, 32 ; xxii. 20, 21, 31 ; xxx. 



Unquenchable Fire. 75 

against men and nations is everywhere represented 
in the Old Testament as an unquenchable fire, and its 
work as a work of destruction and death. These denun- 
ciations do not carry with them the idea of torment be- 
yond death. They do not exclude it. But retribution 
beyond the grave is never in view in the Old Testament 
only so far as captivity in sheol is such a retribution. 
We have already seen that bondage in that prison-house 
is a part, or rather it is the culmination of the divine 
judgment for sin. What horrors may come upon the 
ungodly in that region of outer darkness, or what miti- 
gations, what relief of light and blessedness from the 
Lord of light and life may come to the godly, is not 
tfiere revealed. But one thing is made clear. This de- 
struction in death is not final extinction. The hope of 
resurrection, of ransom from this captivity, we have 
found gleaming all along these Old Testament pages. 
Even the heathen nations, who were Israel's seducers 
and persecutors, are not shut out from it. In Jeremiah 
xlviii., for example, we have the judgments against 
Moab described in the very terms we have been consid- 
ering. " Fear, and the pit, and the snare, shall be upon 
thee, O inhabitant of Moab, saith the Lord. ... A 
fire shall come forth out of Heshbon, and a flame from 
the midst of Sihon, and shall devour the corner of Moab 
and the crown of the children of Shaon. Woe be unto 
thee, O Moab! The people of Chemosh perisheth ; for 
thy sons are taken in captivity and thy daughters in 
captivity. Yet will I bring again the captivity of Moab in 
the latter days, saith the Lord!' (vs. 43-47.) So in the 
next chapter the same thing is said of Ammon and of 



76 The Fire of God's Anger. 

Edom, both of whom were to be consumed by His fierce 
anger. 

The importance of thus fixing the use of the term 
"unquenchable fire" in the Old Testament, and of ob- 
serving the character, the scope, and the issue of the 
judgments it portrays, will be apparent as we proceed. 



CHAPTER XII. 



LATER JEWISH OPINION. 

The phrase, " eternal fire/' does not occur in the Old 
Testament, although the idea is contained in passages 
already quoted which speak of God's anger as a " fire 
which shall burn forever." This judgment by fire we 
have seen to be compatible with the idea of purga- 
tion and restoration. (Isa. iv. 4.) There crept, how- 
ever, into Jewish theology, and especially after the 
exile in Babylon, and the close of the Old Testament 
canon, the idea that a future torment in eternal fire 
awaits the desperately wicked. In this class, however, 
but few Jews were included. This doom was, in the 
main, reserved for incorrigible heathen. 

We do not find the roots of this conception in the Old 
Testament. God's judgments there terminate in the de- 
struction which brings men and nations down to death, 
and shuts them up in Shoel. We are assured, however, 
that this period of death is, for all men, in their own 
order, brought to an end. And all the Old Testament 
views of resurrection imply that it is a redemptive act. 
It must bring to all the subjects of it some order of 
blessing. 

As to the origin of the idea of an eternal torment in 
hell, its sources are heathen, and not Jewish. "This 
doctrine was, as an historical fact, brought back from 
Babylon by the Rabbis. It was a very ancient primary 
doctrine of the Magi, an appendage of their fire kingdom 
of Ahriman ? and may be found in the old Zends, long 



78 The Fire of Gods Anger. 

prior to Christianity."* Hence we must pass beyond the 
region of the Old Testament into the Apocryphal books, 
and into the wide waste of Rabbinical traditions and 
conceits before we find proof that this doctrine was held 
among the Jews. The song of Judith, (xvi. 17) closes 
thus : a Wo to the nations that rise up against my kindred ! 
The Lord Almighty will take vengeance of them in the 
day of judgment, in putting fire and worms in their flesh ; 
and they shall feel them, and weep forever." In 2 Macca- 
bees, vii. 14, we read of a " resurrection unto life," from 
which the tyrant Antiochus should be shut out, receiving 
through the judgment of God "just punishment for his 
pride." (vs. 36.) These earlier apocryphal books, 
which the Roman church receives as part of Holy 
Scripture, furnish, however, no clear outlines of the later 
doctrine of everlasting punishment, and especially of 
such a doom as following resurrection. Passages may 
be quoted from them which seem to teach the annihila- 
tion of the wicked; others, the final restoration of 
all men. " The congregation of the wicked is like tow 
wrapped together, and the end of them is a flame of fire 
to destroy them."f (Eccl. xxi. 9.) " After this the Lord 
looked upon the earth and filled it with His blessings. 
With all manner of living things hath He covered the 
face thereof; and they shall return into it again." 
(xvi. 29-30.) il The mercy of man is toward his neighbor; 
but the mercy of the Lord is upon all flesh. He re- 
proveth and nurtureth, and teacheth,and bringeth again, 
as a shepherd his flock." (xviii. 13.) 

*Life and letters of Chas. Kingsley, pg. 194. See Alger's History of the 
doctrine of a future life (Chs. vii-ix.) 
|See also 2 Esd. xv. 23-26. 



Later Jewish Opinion. 79 

li And after seven days, the world, that yet awaketh 
not, shall be raised up, and that shall die that is corrupt. 
And the earth shall restore those that are asleep in her, 
and so shall the dust those that dwell in -silence, and the 
secret places shall deliver those souls that were com- 
mitted unto them. And the most High shall appear 
upon the seat of judgment, and misery shall pass away, 
and the long suffering shall have amend." (2 Esdras 
vii. 31-33.)* The writer of this book was profoundly 
exercised over the problem of God's dealings with His 
people and with mankind. Instruction concerning these 
mysteries is given him in a series of visions. He is as- 
sured that God's covenant mercy toward His people can- 
not fail, that by His unchanging law of righteousness 
the goodwill be rewarded and the wicked punished; that 
these rewards and punishments are not limited to this 
life, and that the divine administrations are directed 
toward this end : " That all the earth may be reached, 
and may return, being delivered from thy violence, and 
that she may hope for the judgment and mercy of him 
that made her." (xi. 46.) 

When we pass, however, still beyond this post-exilian 
period, we find that the later Jewish apocryphal books 
contain fuller and more definite allusions to the fate of 
the wicked. The Book of Enoch declares that " they 
shall be cast into the damnation of fire, and shall perish 
in anger and in the mighty damnation which lasts to 
eternity." The fourth book of Esdras, written about the 
close of the first century, contains these words : (vii. 46.) 
"A lake of torment shall appear, and over against it a 

*See also Wisdom of Solomon, xi. 22— xii. 2. 



80 The Fire of God's Anger. 

place of rest. And the oven of Gehenna shall be shown, 
and over against it a paradise of delight ; and then shall 
the Highest say to the risen nations : See and understand 
Him whom ye denied, or whom ye did not serve, or 
whose observances ye despised; behold, on this side and 
that ; here is pleasure and rest ; and there fire and tor- 
ments." Any one who cares to examine many similar 
passages found in this class of Jewish writings, will find 
them collated at length by Dr. Pusey in his work " What 
is of faith as to everlasting punishment. ,, (pp. 55-98.) 
There is no doubt that the doctrine of an eternal punish- 
ment for the wicked may be derived from selected passa- 
ges drawn from the Hebrew books of that period, and 
also from the Talmud, which contains the teachings of 
the Rabbins and their traditional interpretations of the 
law. We are not to suppose, however, that there is any 
approach to agreement in their teachings. 

For, in the first place, there is confusion in the Persian 
sources from which the doctrine was drawn. It is only 
from exceptional statements in the Zoroastrian theology 
that it may be derived. The general drift of that system 
was toward restoration. The fire was to purge all things. 
" Through the glowing flood all human kind must pass. 
To the righteous it will prove a pleasant bath, of the 
temperature of milk; but on the wicked the flame will 
inflict terrific pain. Ahriman will run up and down 
Chinevad in the perplexities of anguish and despair. The 
earth-wide stream of fire, flowing on, will cleanse every 
spot and everything. Even the loathsome realm of 
darkness and torment shall be banished and made a part 
of the all-inclusive Paradise. Ahriman himself, reclaimed 



Later Jewish Opinion. 81 

to virtue, replenished with primal light, abjuring the 
memories of his envious ways, and furling thenceforth 
the sable standard of his rebellion, shall become a minis- 
tering spirit of the Most High, and, together with 
Ormuzd, chant the praises of Time-without-bounds. All 
darkness, falsehood, and suffering shall utterly flee away, 
and the whole universe be filled by the illumination of 
good spirits blessed with fruitions of eternal delight."* 
In like manner very many of the passages from the Rab- 
bis do not consist with the idea of unending torment. 
One passage of the Talmud affirms that after twelve 
months of expiatory sufferings, "the bodies of the wicked 
cease to exist, their soul is burned, and a wind scatters 
their cinders under the feet of the just." This is anni- 
hilation. The general drift of Rabbinical teaching was 
toward the idea that Gehenna was not endless torment, 
but purgatory, for at least the wicked Jews and the more 
righteous among the Gentiles. The famous Akiba taught 
that their sufferings would last but twelve months.f The 
severest doctrine of the Rabbis was more merciful than 
the modern dogma which consigns all but an elect com- 
pany of believers to the unspeakable torments of an 
eternal hell. For even the better class among the hea- 
then, as well as wicked Jews, would finally escape from 
these torments. Without attempting to go over the 
ground so exhaustively explored by such recent authors 
as Drs. Puseyand Farrar, we think it is plain from the 
quotations which they abundantly cite:}: that, amid all 

^Persian doctrine of a future lffe. Alger, pg. 143. 
fSee Dr. Pusey's "What is of Faith," etc. pp. 83-89. 
JSee ''Mercy and Judgment," by F. W. Farrar, D.D. Ch. viii. Also 
"What is of Faith," etc., by Dr. Pusey, pp. 50-104, 

6 



82 The Fire of God } s Anger. 

this variety of teaching, the prevalent opinion among the 
Jews during this period concerning the Gehenna of fire 
was that it meant : 

1. For the majority of their own people a temporary 
punishment, followed by forgiveness, 

2. For worse offenders, long, but still terminable 
punishment. 

3. For the worst offenders of all, especially Gentile 
offenders, punishment either followed by annihilation, or, 
issuing in hopeless despair, through failure to attain unto. 
the resurrection of the dead. 

And this suggests the point which has been overlooked 
by most of the writers who have surveyed this field. And 
that is, that future punishment precedes resurrection. 
Resurrection was deliverance. Most of the Rabbis 
either denied the resurrection of the hopelessly wicked, 
or if admitting it, regarded it as only a brief embodiment 
to be terminated by a second death. Thus in the com- 
ment upon Is. xxii. 14, the Jonathan Targum explains 
the second death to be " that which happens when a soul 
that has animated a body a second time separates from 
it." Alger, in his History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, 
pp 170171, states that "most of the Rabbins made the 
resurrection partial. " He quotes one as saying: " Who- 
ever denies the resurrection of the dead shall have no 
part in it, for the very reason that he denies it." Rabbi 
Abbu says : "A day of rain is greater than the resurrec- 
tion of the dead ; because the rain is for all, while the 
resurrection is only for the just." il Sodom and Gomor- 
rah shall not rise in the resurrection of the dead.'' That 
this was the belief of the Pharisees in our Lord's day 



Later Jewish Opinion. 83 

Josephus repeatedly affirms. "The righteous shall have 
power to live again, but sinners shall be detained in an 
everlasting prison."* "The Pharisees say that all souls 
are incorruptible, but that only the souls of good men 
are removed into other bodies."f We have seen that 
the general drift of Old Testament allusions to resurrec- 
tion is that it is a ts hope," a deliverance to all the sub- 
jects of it. And, although the narrower, because unin- 
spired teaching of this later period shut out a large por- 
tion of mankind from this hope, it was still true to this 
great principle, that resurrection is a boon, inasmuch as 
it is essentially redemption from that estate of death and 
captivity in the gloom of Sheol, to which men are con- 
signed for their sins, by the just judgment of God. 

In the light of this great principle then, that resurrec- 
tion is a redemptive act, and that the threatened punish- 
ment in the eternal fire for the sins of this life lies this 
side of resurrection and not beyond it, we shall advance 
to the study of the New Testament teaching. That we 
shall find there hints of a punishment reserved for a class 
of sinners beyond resurrection we do not doubt. But 
that punishment which is concisely described as " the 
second death," we shall see to be a doom, not for the 
sins of this life, but of a life restored in resurrection, and 
again forfeited by incorrigible sin. 



*Antiq, Book 18, Ch. i. 

f Jewish War. Book, 2. Ch. 8. See also "Spirits in Prison," by Dean 
Plumptre, pp. 50-51. 



PART II. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE AXE LAID AT THE ROOT OF THE TREE. 

Certain great principles of the divine administration 
have been clearly brought out by our study of the Old 
Testament. They may be stated thus : 

1. Notwithstanding the ruin brought upon the race by 
sin and its adjudgment to death, God has a gracious pur- 
pose of blessing toward it. 

2. This purpose, first manifested in the selection of a 
chosen people, flows on in ever widening channels ot 
blessing, until it shall reach all the families of the earth. 

3. It does not arrest, however, the operation of that 
primal law which adjudges sinful men to death. 

4. It must reach mankind, therefore, through such a 
triumph over death as shall secure the ultimate recovery 
to life of all men, each in his own order, after they have 
served out their sentence in death's prison-house. 

We shall see, however, as we advance, that this restora- 
tion to life does not lift all men into the rank of that 
eternal life which is the gift of God through Jesus 
Christ, and which is given only to " as many as receive 
Him, even to them that believe on His name," nor does 
it require the final salvation of all. 

We proceed now to study the New Testament upon 
these points, and to show how all our Lord's teaching, 
and that of His apostles, concerning God's designs to- 
ward the world, the punishment of sin, the responsibili- 
ties of life, and the tremendous issues of the future are 

87 



88 The Fire of God's Anger. 

in harmony with, and in fulfillment of, what we have 
found to be taught in the law and the prophets. 

The Old Testament closes with a solemn arraignment 
of the covenant people for infidelity and the declaration 
of Jehovah that He would send His messenger, even the 
messenger of the covenant, to sift and try the nation as 
in a refiner's fire. " For, behold, the day cometh, it 
burneth as a furnace ; and all the proud, and all that 
work wickedness, shall be stubble ; and the day that 
cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that 
it shall leave them neither root nor branch." (Mai. iv. I, 
R. V.) Accordingly we find that John the Baptist, who 
came in the spirit and power of the predicted Eljiah, an- 
nounced that this Messenger of Jehovah was now come 
to do precisely this work of judgment. 

"And even now is the 'axe laid unto the root of the trees ; every 
tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and 
cast into the fire. I indeed baptise you with water unto repentance; 
but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am 
not worthy to bear; He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and 
with fire ; whose fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly 
cleanse His threshing-floor ; and He will gather His wheat into the , 
garner, but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire." 
(Matt. iii. 10-12.) 

This primary announcement of the Forerunner gives 
the key to the meaning of Messiah's mission. The Old 
Testament had plainly taught that all the forms of proud 
and wicked and pretentiously pious manhood must be 
adjudged to death as unworthy of a place in the kingdom 
of God. The religious men of our Lord's day, as has 
been true in every age, were slow to receive this lesson. 
In John's day they were building their hopes upon the 



The Axe Laid at the Root of the Tree. 89 

boasts and claims of a mere natural manhood. " We 
have Abraham for our father." They would not learn 
the lesson of their Scriptures, a lesson confirmed to them 
by every open sepulchre, and by the long and universal 
reign of death over them and their fathers, that this old 
flesh and blood nature cannot inherit the kingdom of 
God, and that His promised salvation must therefore 
come through a hewing down of the old man, with all 
his pride of ancestry, his hypocrisies and self-righteous- 
ness, and a casting of him into the fire for complete de- 
struction. In no other way could room be made for the 
God of resurrection to come in and work out His salva- 
tion for man upon a new basis, and in the power of a 
new life, to be given to the world from a new fountain- 
head, even His anointed Son. That the baptism " with 
the Holy Ghost and with fire" is a work of the same 
character as the burning up of " the chaff with unquench- 
able fire," is proved in the fact that it is a part of this one 
announcement, and also by the subsequent teaching of 
the New Testament that the new Spirit of life from Christ 
is a spirit of judgment and of burning against the flesh 
with its affections and lusts, and that the whole trunk of 
the old manhood is by it consigned to the fire. For it 
is only as we bear about in our bodies the dying of the 
Lord Jesus that His life can be manifested in our mortal 
bodies. We must die with Him, if we are to rise with 
Him into the life eternal. 

This fundamental feature of the Messiah's work is in 
perfect harmony with the Old Testament principles above 
mentioned. No salvation is possible for sinful man ex- 
cept through this way of judgment unto victory. And 



90 The Fire of God's Anger. 

this first mention in the New Testament of the unquench- 
able fire determines for us the meaning of all subsequent 
uses of this phrase, or of its cognates, such as " eternal 
fire," l( the Gehenna of fire." These words set before us 
vividly the operation of that unchanging, resistless law 
of God, by which a consumption is determined upon all 
flesh, not only upon all its evil ways and practices, but 
upon " the root of the tree," the old manhood itself, the 
form and vices of which we have all inherited from 
Adam. It must be cast into the fire. An evil tree can- 
not bring forth good fruit. Hence, God declares I lis 
purpose, at the outset of His Son's mission, to cut the 
old trunk of humanity down. A new tree had already 
been planted, even Christ. And out of the grave of the 
old the new should rise into the life immortal and bring 
forth much fruit. In Him all nations should be blessed. 
The " unquenchable fire," therefore, instead of burying 
the myriads of mankind in a sea of tormenting flame, and 
forever beyond the reach of His salvation, is needed in 
order to clear the way for that salvation. The Christian 
world has been long and wearily oppressed with a horri- 
ble nightmare, induced by its wrong conception of the 
place and use of this " eternal fire " in the economy of 
God. That this expression does apply to a terrible work 
of judgment, and to an irresistible work of death, in 
which God appears as a consuming fire to the ungodly, 
is evident. But so also is our God, the Christian's God, 
a consuming fire. There is no escape for any of us from 
that destroying flame. The axe is laid at the root of the 
tree of every plant of the human race. The old man 
must be slain in the Christian, as in every other man. If 



The Axe Laid at the Root of the Tree, 91 

he sows to the flesh he must reap corruption. This 
warning is specially addressed to him. (Gal. vi. 7, 8.) 
He is saved, not by escaping the just judgments of God 
against him for his sins, but by submitting to them. He 
confesses judgment against himself, when he believes on 
the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. He then and there 
hands over his old nature to judgment and death, and 
accepts God's sentence against it as just, and confesses 
that his only hope is in the salvation wrought for him 
by Christ, who has redeemed his life, and wrought in 
him by the Spirit, whose office it is to create him anew 
in Christ Jesus. It is in this way that, while the tree of 
the old man is hewn down and cast into the fire, we be- 
come graffed into the new man and so become plants of 
righteousness, to be transplanted to the Paradise of God. 
Now all this accords with the Old Testament teaching 
that the promised salvation could come to the world, 
not by a rescue of sinful men and nations from well- 
deserved death for sin, but only after death, and through 
a triumph over it. The seed of the woman was to bring 
rescue to all her seed from their captivity to death. The 
trees were to be cut down and burned, but a new tree of 
life was to be planted. The outcast spirits, of all the 
sons of the first Adam were to be revived through the 
life of the last Adam, made a quickening Spirit. We 
have already said that this resurrection of all is not the 
final salvation of all. For evil types of life and charac- 
ter may appear again in the resurrection, as required by 
the unchanging law, " To every seed his own body." 
And God's eternal fire burns on forever against all such. 
But this does not sec aside the great truth, which we have 



92 The Fire of God^s Anger. 

traced through all Old Testament Scripture, and which 
Jesus Christ came to confirm, that there is a promised 
deliverance of all mankind from the pit of death into 
which their sins have cast them, through a resurrection 
from the dead. What we shall find in the New Testa- 
ment plainly set before us, is the Person of the promised 
Deliverer, and the unchanging principles of righteousness 
by which His salvation proceeds, and the inflexibility of 
its first principle that, " without holiness no man shall 
see the Lord," and that every tree which does not bring 
forth such fruit must be cut down and cast again into 
the lake of fire. 

The one point at which so many Christians have been 
misled as to the meaning of this judgment by fire, is in 
their mistaken view of its relation to the resurrection. 
They have placed it after that event, and regarded resur- 
rection as only preparatory to it, and as a mere heaping 
up of untold anguish upon those who were already 
damned. They have failed to see that as death is the 
wages of sin, incurred by the whole race in Adam, so 
resurrection is the antidote of death, and hence a pro- 
vision of redeeming grace, the fruit of Christ's triumph 
over death. The true Scriptural place of the "fire that 
cannot be quenched," the " eternal fire," the " fire of Ge- 
henna" is before resurrection. These expressions all 
pertain to the realm of death and dissolution. They de- 
scribe a punishment which even now gnaws in the bod- 
ies and souls of men like a consuming fire, and which 
issues in the destruction of both in hell. But all this lies 
this side of resurrection and not beyond it. There is in- 
deed "a second death, which is the lake of fire "into 



The Axe Laid at the Root of the Tree. 93 

which those will finally be cast who despise and abuse 
the grace that intervened to raise them out of death. 
But our Lord's fearful words relate to the retribution 
which follows the sins of this life, not those of the life 
to come. It was the trees planted in the soil of this 
world, not those of the world to come, which He came 
to consign to the unquenchable fire. And as it would 
be absurd to think of a tree as burning forever in such 
a fire, or of chaff as endlessly preserved in a fire which is 
expressly declared to burn it up, so it is a monstrous non- 
sequitur to infer that, because the "fire cannot be quench- 
ed," it must be a fire of endless torment to all who are 
cast into it. These phrases imply the rejection and 
handing over of the old man to utter destruction, as un- 
worthy of any place in life or inheritance in the kingdom 
of the Son of Man. Thus it was that He came to lay 
the axe at the root of the tree. And thus it is that He 
is daily hewing down these corrupt trees of humanity 
around us with which the world abounds, and casting 
them into the unquenchable fire. 



CHAPTER II. 



GEHENNA. 

In conformity with John the Baptist's announcement of 
the Messiah's mission, we find Jesus beginning his minis- 
try with the searching, sifting doctrine of the Sermon on 
the Mount 

Nothing that was false or corrupt or pretentious or 
unjust could find place in the new kingdom which 
He came to found. To enter into the life of that king- 
dom all that was evil in the old life must be given to the 
burning. " If thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, 
pluck it out, and cast it from thee." "And if thy right 
hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from 
thee : for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members 
should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell " 
(Gehenna) (Matt. v. 29, 30). 

At various other times we find Jesus warning men 
against this great danger. In sending out His disciples 
to preach, He urged them not to fear them which kill 
the body, but are not able to kill the soul : "but rather 
fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body 
in hell " (x. 28). In Matthew xviii. we have the warning 
repeated that it is far better to sacrifice hand or foot or 
eye, rather than having two hands or two feet or two eyes 
" to be cast into the eternal fire." This expression in 
verse 8 is only another form of stating that which in 
verse 9 is described as a being " cast into the hell of 
fire." A comparison of these two verses shows that 
these two Scripture phrases, M eternal fire " and tl Ge- 



94 



Gehenna. 95 

henna of fire," are equivalent. They denote one and the 
same punishment. 

We find the same word again in the denunciation of 
the Tharisees (Matt, xxiii. 15, 33), who would compass 
sea and land to make one proselyte, and who, under 
their tutelage, would become two-fold more a child of 
hell than themselves. In still more bitter words he calls 
them the offspring of vipers, who could by no means 
escape the damnation of hell. In Mark ix. the words in 
Matthew xviii. are repeated, except that here we have 
the phrases " unquenchable fire," the " fire that is not 
quenched," used to describe the fire of hell. Another 
expression, " where their worm dieth not," is added here 
derived from Isa. lxvi. 24. The words in Isaiah, which 
furnish the Old Testament basis for the New Testament 
usage, relate to the utter destruction of the Lord's ene- 
mies. "And they shall go forth, and look upon the car- 
cases of the men that have transgressed against me : for 
their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be 
quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all 
flesh." In this passage there can be no reference to an 
endless torment of these transgressors. It is their dead 
bodies which are in view, upon which the worms prey 
unceasingly and the fires feed with a consuming energy 
which nothing can avert. That this passage does not 
imply the eternal torment of those cast into the fire, is 
manifest from the words appended in verses 49 and 50 
(R. V.,) tl For every one shall be salted with fire. Salt is 
good : but if the salt have lost its saltness, wherewith 
will ye season it ? Have salt in yourselves and be at 
peace one with another." This whole discourse of Jesus 



96 The Fire of God's Anger. 

was designed to enjoin humility and self-sacrifice upon 
his disciples, who had been disputing one with another 
as to who should be greatest. By setting a little child 
in the midst of them, by shewing them that their honor 
and reward would be found in lowly service, He taught 
them that whatever in them caused them to offend against 
this principle of self-sacrifice they should lop off and cast 
away. In this way, by a loss of a part, they should save 
the whole. It was far better thus to " enter into life " 
and " into the kingdom of God." For it is the law of 
life that it can be preserved only in this way. " Every 
one shall be salted with fire." Salt is itself enduring, 
and it preserves other substances from decay. The salt 
here is this spirit of self-sacrifice. This preserves the 
life from destruction. It gives over to the burning the 
evils of the life. If men possess it not, they must them- 
selves be cast into the fire. For every one, saint and 
sinner, must be salted with this fire which burns up self- 
seeking and destroys the old man. If men lose this 
spirit, what shall take its place or do in them its saving 
work ? " If the salt lose its true character, wherewith 
shall ye season it? " " Have salt in yourselves, and be 
at peace one with another. ,, That is, admit this principle 
of self-surrender into the core of your being. This will 
silence all such disputes and make you at peace one with 
another. How men can derive a doctrine of the ever- 
lasting torment of sinful men in a hell of fire from these 
words, spoken not to men indiscriminately, but to disci- 
ples to teach them the law of self-preservation, is marvel- 
ous indeed. The most that could possibly be drawn 
from it would be the destruction in the fire of those who 



Gehenna. 97 

will not submit to this sacrifice of self. But even this 
inference is made to be an uncertain one by the compar- 
ison of this fire, to which every one must be subjected, 
to salt, the effect of which is to preserve. 

We have already seen that, before the coming of 
Christ, there was current among the Jews an idea of such 
a destroying fire, as awaiting the wicked in Sheol. The 
name Gehenna, which is the original word for " hell " in 
all the above passages, was derived from Ge Hinnom, 
the valley of Hinnom, adjacent to Jerusalem, into which 
the offal of the city and putrid carcases of beasts, and 
sometimes of criminals, were cast. Purifying fires were 
kept constantly burning, to aid in consuming the corrupt 
mass. It furnished, therefore, a vivid picture of that 
destructive work of judgment by which God consumes, 
by the fire of His anger, the vile refuse of wicked 
men. 

As to the difference between Gehenna and Sheol or 
Hades y we are unable to discern that it is a radical one. 
We have already found that the Old Testament writers 
constantly look upon Sheol as a realm of destruction. 
The righteous indeed had hope in his death that God 
would preserve his soul from being devoured in this pit. 
There was a place of refuge and repose, which in later 
times was called " Abraham's bosom," for the righteous. 
But the wicked must sink into the abyss, and this was 
Gehenna, a place not radically differing from Hades, but 
only a deeper pit in the same gloomy abode. Accord- 
ingly we find that Jesus sometimes uses the word Hades 
as the equivalent of Gehenna, and notably in describing 
the punishment of the rich man who had despised Lazarus 
7 



98 The Fire of God's Anger. 

(Luke xvi.). It was in Hades that he lifted up his eyes, 
being in torment. And there he was i( tormented in this 
flame," It was down to Hades that Chorazin and Beth- 
saida and Capernaum should be cast. This equivalent 
use of the two terms, Hades and Gehenna, by our Lord, 
is proof that both radically represent the same idea of a 
place of destruction- — only in Gehenna the destruction 
seems more complete and hopeless. 

It thus appears that all these terms, Hades, Gehenna, 
eternal fire, the fire that cannot be quenched, furnace of 
fire, belong to the same category, 

We pass now to the important inquiries: i. What 
punishment do these terms describe? 2. When is it 
inflicted ? We have no doubt that the one idea in which 
they all unite is that of complete destruction. This is 
the uniform Scriptural penalty of sin. Man was made 
an embodied image of God. The idea that this image 
consists only in a spiritual likeness does not fully explain 
the narrative of man's creation. Nor does it agree with 
the New Testament definition of the Christ who is the 
perfected Man, the true 4< Image of the invisible God/' 
and in whom " dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead 
bodily!' Our ordinary conceptions of man's dignity of 
nature depreciate embodiment. And so we miss the 
meaning of the threatened punishment of sin, and also of 
the " hope toward God " which illumines all Scripture, of 
resurrection. 

Man forfeited his life and his high place of dignity by 
sin. The wages of his sin was death. This involved 
not only spiritual blight, but the destruction of his 
being as a man. The earlier Scriptures contain only 



Gehenna. 99 

here and there a gleam of hope that personal being could 
survive this dissolution and reappear as man. A few, 
like Abraham, were lifted on to a summit of faith, from 
which they discerned the promise of resurrection. 
Later, however, among the Jews, the security and final 
recovery from death of the godiy became more and more 
assured, while the wicked were viewed as sinking more 
and more deeply into the abyss of destruction under the 
consuming hand of God. This was Gehenna. But the 
radical idea of its punishment was banishment from the 
light of life, the loss of embodied being, a loss, to those 
confirmed in wickedness, beyond the hope of retrieval 
through resurrection. 

Gehenna, therefore, is essentially the pit of destruction. 
The death-idea underlies all Scripture allusions to the 
punishment due to man for sin. All the words em- 
ployed contain this idea of perishing; and the agents of 
this destruction are the forces of nature, which Scripture 
views as the angels of God. By the ministry of these 
forces, man has been built up into the highest form of 
creaturehood, and they are the powers who destroy it. 
They execute God's judgments through blight and 
famine and disease and plague and war. For all human 
lusts and unbridled passions are set on fire by forces that 
move on the course of nature. And as " fire" is the form 
in which these forces exhibit their most destructive 
energy, it stands in Scripture as the type and representa- 
tive of all destroying agents. They are often grouped 
together under this one term, "consuming fire" (Deut. ix« 
3 ; xxxii. 22-24. Ezek. xx. 47, etc.). This is the " fire 
that cannot be quenched " of the Old Testament. And 



100 The Fire of God's Anger. 

the " eternal fire " of the New Testament is but the same 
devouring energy of Nature, which, as God's minister, 
consumes all created forms, and especially man, as now 
a sinner, condemned by the law of nature as well as of 
God, to go into its Gehenna of fire. In the earlier days 
of Christianity this was commonly viewed as material 
fire. Now it has been thinned down to a mere figure of 
mental torment. It is not, indeed, a gross material 
flame, but it is more than a mere fever of the mind. 
Eternal fire is the one term which comprehends all those 
devouring forces which destroy man from off this heritage 
of creation, of which God made him the heir and lord, 
and quench in him the light of life; and Gehenna is the 
maw of these whirling forces down into whose vortex man 
disappears at death. 

What our Saviour, therefore, warns men against in 
these fearful words is this loss of their lives and this 
destruction of their bodies in hell. It was evidently a 
destruction that went beyond physical death. Men were 
warned to fear Him who was able not only to kiJl the 
body, but to destroy both soul and body in hell. The 
parable of the rich man and Lazarus makes it evident 
that the process of destruction in Gehenna lasts longer 
than the death of the body. The rich man died, and was 
buried, and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in tor- 
ment. It was, therefore, not annihilation. Indeed, the 
declaration of Jesus (John v. 29), which is the first clear 
Scriptural announcement of the purpose of God to raise 
the unjust dead, proves that the continuity of their being 
is somehow preserved. Our own explanation is that these 
uniform Scripture terms which describe man as perish- 



Gehenna. 101 

ing, as destroyed in hell, refer to what we have spoken 
of as his destruction out of manhood. So constant is 
the use of these terms that we are obliged to regard them 
as involving, either the extinction of man's existence, or 
his destruction qua homo, that is of his being as a man. 
The former cannot be true ; for, in that case, there would 
be nothing of the person left to be raised. The newly- 
created being, at the resurrection, could not retain the 
consciousness nor the responsibility of the old. There 
must be, therefore, a survival of the human spirit through 
this abyss of death. As to how long it may retain the 
intense personal consciousness shown by the rich man 
in the parable, we do not know. The passage already 
referred to (Matt. x. 28) seems to distinguish between the 
" soul " and " spirit." It speaks of a threatened destruc- 
tion of the soul in hell with the body. What seems 
death to us is not the whole of it. The death of that 
physical frame which we call the body may not com- 
pletely disembody the spirit. There may be finer quali- 
ties of substance entering into its embodiment than those 
of which our senses take cognizance. These may per- 
tain to the soul, which would, therefore, furnish the spirit 
with that more subtle embodiment which outlasts the 
gross body. But the soul also may be destroyed in hell. 
Hence, it may be more than a mere figure of speech by 
which Dives in Hades is represented as still having 
the bodily organs of eyes and tongue. He was not yet 
a naked, outcast spirit. Whether "the spirit of a man" 
is also destructible is an inquiry beyond our present 
purpose, which is to show that the punishment in Ge- 
henna, while it includes material death, lasts beyond it 



102 The Fire of God's Anger. 

and involves a prolonged suffering of the "soul," which 
also, as distinct from the spirit, is a constituent part of 
man's embodied being, the whole of which may be de- 
stroyed in hell. And this is the fearful doom against 
which Jesus warns us men. 

But the important inquiry yet remains, When is this 
punishment inflicted? On the answer to this question 
the whole of any system of eschatology turns. 

We do not hesitate to reply that these words of Jesus 
refer to an immediate punishment, and they can be pro- 
perly explained in no other way. The Church, for cen- 
turies and with amazing uniformity, has interpreted these 
words as descriptive of a doom to be visited upon the 
wicked after a remote resurrection and a general judg- 
ment. Obscure passages in the Apocalypse, which speak 
of a future casting into a lake of fire of a class of resur- 
rected men, and which we shall have occasion hereafter 
to examine, have fixed the meaning of all these earlier 
and plainer passages. These words of Jesus, and the 
subsequent references of the apostles to an eternal de- 
struction to be visited upon the ungodly, relate to men 
in flesh and blood, and not to dead men raised. There 
is not the slightest warrant for the assumption that, when 
Jesus urges men to cut off a hand or a foot, if need be, 
rather than having two hands or two feet, the whole body 
should be cast into hell, He means, not the present body, 
but a resurrection body of the far-distant future. His 
words evidently refer to a now-impending loss of this 
present embodied life in a present Gehenna. For that 
Gehenna is a present fact is directly certified by James in 
his Epistle (iii. 6), where he speaks of the tongue as now 



Gehenna. 103 

"set on fire of hell n (Gehenna). And that the casting 
of the wicked into hell is not a remote, but an immediate 
punishment, is made as plain as it can be, by the plainest 
of all passages which refer to it, the parable of the Rich 
Man and Lazarus. 

And yet, just at this point, as to the time when this 
Gehenna punishment is inflicted, our long-accepted sys- 
tems of eschatology have stumbled and gone astray, and 
so the deepest and most vital truth of the Bible — redemp- 
tion through resurrection — has been long hidden from 
our cyQs. 



CHAPTER III. 



ETERNAL FIRE, A FACT OF SCIENCE AS 
WELL AS OF SCRIPTURE. 

We have thus far examined the Scriptural use of the 
term " eternal fire " and its cognates sufficiently to deter- 
mine, 

1. That the one radical idea, common to them all, is 
that of destruction. 

2. The term comprehends and is the exponent of all 
the agencies by which the consuming energy of Nature 
wastes and destroys the bodies and souls of men. 

Thoughtful men have long been waiting for some 
statement of the doctrine of future punishment which 
should be scientific as well as Scriptural. If we are not 
yet able to arrive at this, we may at least indicate the 
direction in which it may be found. 

Our primary source of knowledge upon this subject is 
the Holy Scriptures. But its interpreters have too often 
forgotten that God has revealed Himself to men in other 
ways than through His Word. As man was made in 
His image, no conception of God's government of the 
world can command permanent assent which violates 
what He has revealed of Himself in man and in the con- 
stitution of human society. And, as all things were made 
by Him, nothing can be true which does not accord with 
what He has made known of Himself in the system of 
Creation. The mistake of Theology has been in its too 
exclusive view of God as the moral governor of the 
world, and of man as His subject. Whereas man is also 



Eternal Fire. 105 

the product of a created system of which God is the 
Author, and the subject of natural as well as of moral 
law. His place and destiny in this system of nature 
needs to be studied before we can appreciate the Bible 
terms which define his destiny as a subject of God's moral 
government. 

We therefore pause here to inquire whether there is 
anything in Nature corresponding to the Bible doctrine 
that sinful men must be cast into eternal fire. 

The observations of Science convince us that the pri- 
mary condition of the elemental substances out of which 
ail created forms have been built up, was one in which 
their atoms were held apart by great heat. The visible 
universe is for the most part a wilderness of fire. The 
nearest star to us in space is the Sun, a vast incandescent 
globe of fire, in whose photosphere vaporous masses ot 
iron and sodium, and other minerals are glowing with 
intensest heat. Ori the Earth these same substances have 
been cooled down, and have combined according to their 
chemical affiaities. In this process of combination the 
heat-energy has been rendered latent. There has thus 
been a progress in the creative process from the state of 
primeval fire, to one of chemical combination and equilib- 
rium, and cosmical order, by which these elements have 
become subordinated to the ends and uses of Life. Two 
antagonistic forces seem to have been contending for the 
mastery on this arena of the universe, the eternal fire and 
the eternal Life. The fire resolves all things into their 
primary elements. It is constantly claiming back the 
things that have been wrung out of its bosom. All pro- 
cesses of decay are but the slower gnawing of the tooth 



106 The Fire of God's Anger. 

of this eternal fire. Life, however, has been from the 
first capturing and subsidizing these substances to the 
ends of its manifestation. Under its transforming power 
they are organized into a variety of creature forms, ad- 
vancing from one stage of development to another, until 
finally man has appeared at the summit of the series, the 
highest embodiment of created life. It has been from 
the first, however, a law of creation that all defective 
forms of creature life cannot abide. They are but tran- 
sient and must give way to higher forms. There has 
been a constant struggle in Nature toward a perfect and 
abiding form, but it has not yet been reached. Type 
after type, race after race, has been suffered to sink back 
into the womb of the eternal fire out of which they were 
brought forth. But along all the series the abiding Life 
has been conserving the fruits of past triumphs and mak- 
ing new conquests. 

Still, however, it remains the law of Nature that all 
defective forms of life must yield to the law of decay and 
go back to the elemental abyss out of which they sprang. 
And to this law man is no exception. He exists as yet 
only in a sinful and imperfect type of manhood. And 
therefore he is made subject to vanity, and is under bond- 
age to this law of corruption. He must depart into the 
eternal fire. 

The eternal Life, however, has at length been 
manifested in the person of the perfect Man. It 
was" with the Father" from the beginning, and has 
now been "manifested unto us " (i John i. I, 2). The 
man-nature in Christ has reached its ideal as the perfect 
and indestructible image of God, the depository and 



Eternal Fire. 107 

vehicle of His Life, the representative of His authority, 
the inheritor and administrator of His vast estate. As 
such, Jesus is now triumphant over death and all the 
powers of the Universe, crowned Lord over all. 

It is then not only in obedience to the requirements 
of a moral law, but also to the law of nature, that sinful 
men are consigned to the eternal fire, and that only those 
who, by faith in Christ are made partakers of His nature, 
enter into the eternal life. This is no arbitrary sentence 
of an irate Judge. It is according to the eternal order 
of Nature. 

We have already seen that the term " fire " stands in 
Scripture as the representative of all the death-dealing 
forces of Nature. In them all God is seen as " a consum- 
ing fire.'* We have also here to notice that a wide gen- 
eralization of the passages in Scripture which refer to 
angelic powers, convinces us that they are either closely 
identified, if not identical, with what we call the forces of 
nature.* They are the executive forces of the one Su- 
preme force in Creation. And as it is these forces 
which draw men down into that abyss of dissolution 
which, in this economy of Nature, may be viewed as its 
gulf of eternal fire, it is in their agency that we find the 
proper explanation of the angels which attend the admin- 
istration of the Son of Man. They "gather out of His 
kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniq- 
uity and cast them into a furnace of fire " (Matt. xiii. 
41-42). And they are the angels of His might who shall 
attend Him at His revelation from Heaven in flaming 

* See upon this subject Chaps. I, IV, and VI, of »« Mystery of Creation and 
of Man." 



103 The Fire of God's Anger. 

fire (2 Thess. ii. 8). The language of Scripture also ac- 
cords with Science in assuming that there are two classes 
of forces in the realm of nature, the one life-giving, the 
other death-dealing. There are two classes of effects, 
and if these are not to be referred to two classes of agen- 
cies, the one constructive, the other destructive, there 
must at least be an essential difference in the mode of 
operation when the forces of Nature transcend the sphere 
of beneficent action, and become the ministers of evil 
and of death. Without, however, seeking to penetrate 
this mystery, which is beyond our ken, it is sufficient to 
know that the common language of both Science and 
Scripture recognizes these two realms of cosmic forces, 
in one of which the energy of Nature is directed toward 
the production of order out of chaos, of light out of 
darkness, of life out of death. And in the other its en- 
ergy is bent to produce the counter class of effects, re- 
manding to darkness and chaos, dissolving the elements 
that had combined to the production of forms of life and 
beauty, breaking down organisms, and carrying down 
into the vortex of dissolution the creature forms which 
Life had built up and beautified out of the substances it 
had rescued from their grasp. Now, as the angels of 
light are identified in Scripture with these beneficent 
operations, so on the other hand it has a name for these 
destructive and death-dealing forces. It calls them 4t the 
devil and his angels," "the ruler," " the kingdom of 
darkness." It has been a great mistake to regard these 
evil powers as operating against man in the sphere of 
moral agency alone. They are more truly and deeply 
his physical enemies. They have the power of disease, 



Eternal Fire. 109 

(Luke x. 19; xi. 14-18; xiii. 16; Acts x. 38), and of 
death (Heb. ii. 14). The devil is a prince over all death- 
dealing forces in Nature (Job i. 12-19; Psalm lxviii. 
49; Ephes. ii, 2, vi. 12). The difference between the 
scriptural and the scientific conception of these forces is 
that the former always views them as living spiritual 
agents. But even here science is gradually approaching 
the scriptural conception. Herbert Spencer admits that 
the final postulate of science, the omnipresent, inscrut- 
able, unknowable Force may be living and spiritual. 
Why may not all minor forces in this created system be 
also living powers? Indeed we were not long ago as- 
sured by an abk writer upon the " Fallacy of Material- 
ism," that " the theory that the universe consists entirely 
of mind stuff," and that " mental and physical phenomena, 
although apparently diverse, are really identical, is the 
one toward which all the greatest minds that have stud- 
ied this question in the right way are tending." 

There is one sublime luminous truth, however, revealed 
in Scripture, which is beyond the province of Science, 
And that is that the Author and Energizer of this created 
system is directing all its forces, not only to the prepara- 
tion of it as an abode for the highest forms of life, but 
toward its ultimate transformation and deliverance from 
the yoke of these evil powers that have wrought in it 
this work of corruption and death (Rom. viii. 19-23; 
Rev. v. 13, xxi. 1-5). The u eternal fire," which is the 
concrete expression of all these devouring agencies of 
Nature, must finally consume them all in its own bosom. 
For we read that it is " prepared for the devil and his 
angels " (Matt. xxv. 41 ; Rev. xx. 10, 14). The death- 



11.0 The Fire of God's Anger. 

dealing forces contain within themselves the principle of 
self-destruction. The whole realm of death and hell, 
with a the devil and his angels," must be ,c cast into the 
lake of fire." And the Scripture term for this fate is " de- 
struction " (i Cor. xv. 24-26 ; Heb. ii. 14). t( There shall 
be no more death " (Rev. xxi. 4). 

But although Science halts here, where Scripture ad- 
vances with firm tread and lifts the veil, there is yet com- 
plete accord in 'what both teach as to the pit of dissolu- 
tion which Nature, or rather the God of Nature, has dug 
for all the imperfect forms of created life which have 
heretofore appeared, and which contain within themselves 
the principle of decay and death. And the natural man, 
as belonging to the same system, must depart, under the 
common curse, into the eternal fire. The sentence of the 
Son of Man (Matt. xxv. 41), " Depart, ye cursed," is as 
truly a sentence of the law of Nature as it is of the law 
of God. Only one Man has as yet appeared in whom 
the Eternal Life was so manifested as to enable Him to 
rise above and out of this pit of death into the glory of a 
divine and immortal manhood. Union with Him, by faith, 
is the only power of life that can save our lives from destruc- 
tion and redeem us out of the hands of all our enemies. 
It is true only of those in whom this purifying and 
conserving life -power dwells, that they " go into life 
eternal." 

It is manifest, therefore, that before we can arrive at 
any true doctrine of future or present punishment for 
sin, we must learn to view man in his relations to this . 
natural system in which God has placed him, of which 
he is a product, and with whose destiny his own is in- 



Eternal Fire. Ill 

volved. The fire of hell is not merely a future torment 
of the mind. The Scripture terms are too literal for this. 
Nor, on the other hand, is it a gulf of flame specially 
created for the endless torment in body and soul of lost 
men. It is a present fact of nature, a fact the proofs of 
which are all around us, and the signs of whose activity 
are everywhere in nature apparent ; yea, even in our own 
bodies and souls, depraving, blighting and consuming. 
We walk each day along the edge of this bottomless pit. 
Each night we go to sleep upon the confines of this outer 
darkness. The fire that burns in our very life-blood is a 
shred of this eternal fire. The vices that taint and in- 
flame it, that blight the bodies of men and consume their 
energies of soul are but the outer lappings of the billows 
that toss on this lake of fire and beat themselves upon 
these shores of life whereon we tread for a few brief 
years. And the yawning gulf of this sea of raging forces 
and of elemental unrest waits to receive us all. The cry 
of even Jesus, in presence of it, was, " Save me, oh God; 
for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep 
mire, where there is no standing : I am come into deep 
waters where the floods overflow me . . . Let me not 
sink . . . neither let the deep swallow me up, and let 
not the pit shut her mouth upon me . . . Draw nigh 
unto my soul and redeem it : deliver me because of mine 
enemies " (Ps. lxix). With such " strong crying and 
tears " did even this Divine Man " offer up prayers and 
supplications unto Him that was able to save Him from 
death, and was heard in that He feared " (Heb. v. 7). 

We must, therefore, open our minds to take in this full 
and Scriptural significance of death, the appointed wages 



112 Tne Five of God's Anger. 

of sin, if we would understand the Scripture terms which 
set forth its punishment. The meaning of death, in God's 
economy of nature and of moral government, has v been 
strangely perverted by a satanic perpetuation in the 
minds of men of the original lie, " Ye shall not surely 
die." Men have believed themselves of an immortal na- 
ture, apart from God. And hence the real significance 
of the death-sentence has been missed, and also the real 
value of the gospel record that God hath given us eternal 
life in His Son. We need, therefore, to know that all 
these Scripture terms, "Gehenna," the " hell of fire," 
" eternal fire," the " fire that cannot be quenched," all per- 
tain to this realm of death and dissolution, and describe 
to us the pit, which not only the law of God, but the law 
of Nature, has dug for the sin-blighted bodies and souls 
of men. It is not to a realm of endless torment, but 
to an abyss of inexorable dissolution, protracted indeed 
beyond the death of the body, for the soul, as a finer es- 
sence of man's being, is longer in its dying (seepg. ioi), 
to which wicked men are consigned. And even the right- 
eous, as to their flesh and blood nature, which is but car- 
nal, and must see corruption, do not escape this pit. It 
is only as they are made partakers of the divine nature, 
and become in life and spirit identified with it, that they 
li go into life eternal." This is the profoundest teaching 
of the scene in Matt. xxv. 31-41. Their life in manhood 
has become incorporate with the life of the Divine Man. 
And so they go with Him into His kingdom of joy and 
into the life eternal. But here again, this doom of the 
wicked, and of this we cannot be reminded too often, is 
immediate and lies this side of resurrection. The eternal 



Eternal Fire. 113 

fire is a present fact. It pertains to this present economy 
of nature. This, indeed, is the real significance of the 
adjective which describes it. It is the aionion, the age- 
during fire. It pertains specially to this order of nature 
and not to the ages to come. Its power then will be gone, 
for there shall be no more curse nor death (Rev. xxii. 3). 
It is therefore a present Son of Man, now exalted to 
Headship over all the forces of the Universe (Ephes. i. 
20-23), seated on the throne of an ever-present judgment, 
and executing the law of this present system of Nature, 
whose voice we are to hear in the dread sentence, " De- 
part ye cursed into eternal fire, prepared for the devil 
and his angels." This is the consignment, not of a future 
host of resurrected dead, who are not here in view, but 
of the living generations of unrighteous men, to that pre- 
sent abyss of dissolution which yawns beneath us all as a 
gulf of consuming fire. It is from this now-impending 
peril that His gospel is sent out with its glad tidings of 
rescue. Its gift of eternal life is the divine antidote to this 
death. And so great is the power of life now deposited 
in the new Source of Life to men, that " power has been 
given unto Him over all flesh," to give not only eternal 
life to a chosen seed who are to be associated with Him 
in His life-giving work (John xvii. 2), but also to raise 
up out of the abyss of death to lower orders of life (each 
in his own time and order), the masses of mankind who 
have gone down into this pit (John v. 28, 29). Their res- 
urrection, although it be to judgment and corrective dis- 
cipline, is yet the result of His redeeming work and a 
manifestation of His triumphant power. And it violates 

the whole order of God's working in this plan of creation, 

8 



lit The Fire of God's Anger. 

and the whole spirit and meaning of His Word in its deal- 
ings with these great problems of life and death, to view 
this recovery of the unjust dead as anything but a bless- 
ing, even though it bring with it new risks with the new 
opportunities of life. 

Moreover this view of God's gracious purpose to re- 
cover men from the abyss of eternal fire into which they 
are cast by the law of Nature, as well as by the sentence 
of the Son of Man, is necessary to show how His good- 
ness answers to His severity. The eternal fire is not 
master in this universe, only a servant. The devil wins 
no triumphs that are not turned into defeats by Him who 
was manifested to destroy him and his works. Not even 
death can hold his trophies. " The last enemy that shall be 
destroyed is death." And death and hell shall be cast 
into the lake of fire (Rev. xx. 14). There is, indeed, before 
sinful men a fearful punishment. It is no light thing to die 
and to sink down, body and soul, into that abyss where 
burns the eternal dissolving fire. It is no small privation 
to be shut out from the light and life and blessedness of those 
of whom Jesus says, "They shall never taste of death." 
" I give unto them eternal life " (John viii. 5 2, x. 28). And 
wicked men, when raised, must still be adjudged unworthy 
of this life. And yet their recovery will prove the truth 
of what the book of Creation and the Book of God both 
teach, that the Eternal Life is master of the realm of Eter- 
nal Fire, that Love is stronger than wrath. To take away 
every element ot hope from the resurrection of all but the 
small class who now receive Christ, is to limit His grace 
and power as the Prince of Life, and to deny that His 
gospel is glad tidings of great joy to all people. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE JUDGMENT-SCENE OF MATT. XXV. 31-46. 

" But when the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the 
angels with Him, then shall He sit on the throne of His glory : and 
before Him shall be gathered all the nations : and He shall separ- 
ate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep 
from the goats: and He shall set the sheep on the right hand, but 
the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on His 
right hand, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom 
prepared for you from the foundation of the world : for I was an 
hungred and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty and ye gave me 
drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me in ; naked, and ye clothed 
me : I was sick, and ye visited me : I was in prison and ye came 
unto me. Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, Lord, 
when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee ? or athirst, and gave 
thee drink ? And when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in ? 
or naked and clothed thee ? And when saw we thee sick, or in 
prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say 
unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it unto one 
of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me. Then 
shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye 
cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his 
angels : for I was an hungred and ye gave me no meat : I was 
thirsty, and ye gave me no drink : I was a stranger and ye took 
me not in ; naked, and ye clothed me not ; sick, and in prison, and 
ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer, saying, Lord, 
when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, 
or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee ? Then shall 
He answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye 
did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me. And these 
shall go away into eternal punishment : but the righteous into eter- 
nal life." 

This passage, which we have transcribed in full from 
the New Version, is the crucial passage in eschatology. 

115 



116 The Fire of God's Anger. 

It is the one passage in the New Testament which, 
above all others, has determined and fixed the prevalent 
doctrine of endless punishment. 

By all our previous studies in the Bible, especially of 
the Old Testament, we have been irresistibly led to this 
conclusion, namely, that no consistent view of its great 
plan of redemption, and no adequate fulfilment of its 
promises, is possible which makes death the limit of all 
God's gracious dealings toward the masses of mankind 
who have not known Him, and which takes away from 
their promised resurrection every element of hope. We 
have already found that all our Lord's previous teaching 
about the " unquenchable," the " eternal, " fire is perfectly 
consistent with the thought that He is speaking of a 
present Hell, into which man's present embodied being 
must be cast for destruction ; and that the interpretation 
which projects this punishment beyond the resurrection, 
and puts the stress of it there, is wholly arbitrary and 
unnatural. It is this present body and soul of man 
which is in danger of being destroyed in hell. 

We purpose now to examine this passage in Matt. 
xxv to ascertain whether its teaching harmonizes with 
this current thought of all Scripture. Does it shut out 
all the nations of unregenerate mankind from any 
hope in and beyond their resurrection from the dead, 
and shut them up to a final doom in an everlasting 
hell ? 

Before we proceed, however, tp this main inquiry we 
remark briefly upon this passage. 

I. It forms part of an address by our Lord upon " the 
last things," spoken, not to the multitude, nor even to 



Matt. xxv. 31-46. 117 

all His disciples, but, as we learn from Mark xiii. 3 to 
Peter and James and John and Andrew, " who asked 
Him privately, Tell us, when shall these things be? 
and what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end 
of the age?" 

2. The immediate occasion of their question was the 
Master's recent prediction of the destruction of the 
temple. 

3. This impending event is made the occasion of 
directing their minds to other and wider judgments, of 
which it was to be the forerunner, and reaching beyond 
the Jews to all nations. 

4. As judgment was to begin with the Jewish nation 
so the twenty fifth chapter declares to us specially, in 
the parables of the ten virgins and of the talents, how it 
must begin at the house of God. The closing parable, 
the sorting between sheep and goats, shows that it must 
extend to " all the nations/' and what the end shall be 
of them that obey not the gospel of God. 

5. The standard of judgment resolves itself simply 
into this, — similarity of nature with the Judge. All of 
those in whom the Christ- nature has been begotten, and 
who therefore have done His works, are adjudged to 
eternal life. All who cannot stand this test are banished 
from His presence to " the eternal fire." 

And here we come to the main enquiry before us. Is 
this an irrevocable doom to endless misery in an ever- 
lasting hell ? Before we can answer this, another and a 
preliminary inquiry must be raised, the answer to which 
will go very far in determining the main issue. 

It is of prime importance in interpreting this vision of 



118 ' The Fire of God's Anger. 

judgment to give it its proper location. Dees it depict 
a judgment of mankind pertaining to the period during 
which the gospel is preached to "all the nations," and 
specially a consummating judgment upon these living 
nations, with which that period should close, or does the 
vision pre-suppose a previous resurrection of all the dead ? 

No Christian will deny that our Lord Jesus Christ is 
now exalted to be the Judge of both the living and the 
dead, nor that the principle of judgment here laid down 
applies to both classes, and must prevail in all realms 
and ages. But as to this particular vision we have no 
hesitation in saying that it has no primary reference to 
the resurrected masses of mankind, but to a test to 
which the living nations of men were to be subjected. 
And the doom pronounced is to a destruction which 
those who obey not the gospel must suffer in death and 
before resurrection, and not after it. For 

i. The analogies of the whole discourse require this. 
It begins by describing the approaching judgment upon 
the Jews. This was to be visited upon a living genera- 
tion of men and not upon men brought out of their 
graves. This wider judgment is of the same series, and, 
therefore, we infer the subjects of it to be living nations 
and not resurrected men. The fact is, ungodly men who 
are dead are always viewed in Scripture as already judged 
and sent down to Sheol or Hell. 

2. The phrase " all the nations " is the ordinary Scrip- 
ture designation of the Gentile world outside of Judaism. 

3. There is not a word about resurrection in the whole 
discourse. This idea must first be read into the passage 
before it can be read out of it. 



Matt. xxv. 31-4.6. 119 

4. This judgment-scene is based upon the vision of 
the coming of the Son of Man given in Daniel vii. Its 
costume is derived from it. Daniel's vision relates to a 
kingdom to be administered over men on the earth, and 
one in which all peoples, nations, and languages should 
serve and obey Him. 

5. A convincing proof that this is a pre-resurrection 
judgment is given in the emphatic way in which Jesus 
assured His disciples that that generation should not 
pass away, till all these things be accomplished. We are 
aware of the efforts made to evade the force of this 
declaration, — made chiefly, too, by a class of interpreters 
who are sticklers for the principle that the plain literal 
meaning of Scripture language is always to be preferred. 
But the large majority of both Greek and common-sense 
readers will still believe that Jesus meant to guard His 
hearers against an impression that these great events of 
His Messianic rule and judgment were remote. He 
constantly warned them that they were at the doors. 
In Matthew xvi. 27-28, after setting before them the 
radical test of self-denial to which all true disciples must 
submit, He tells them, " For the Son of Man shall come 
in the glory of His Father with His angels ; and then 
He shall reward every man according to his works. 
Verily, I say unto you, There be some standing here 
which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of 
Man coming in His kingdom." Here again the attempt 
is made to evade the force of these words by referring 
them to the vision of His coming kingdom granted 
to some of the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
If these words stood alone they might be susceptible of 



120 The Fire of God's Anger. 

this explanation. But the passage is one of a class. 
Every reference of Jesus to His coming and kingdom 
carries with it this idea of nearness. He was always 
most careful to guard His disciples against the thought 
of delay and to urge upon them expectancy. Nor are 
we to be deterred from putting this meaning upon His 
words by the majestic accompaniments of the warning. 

In the twenty-fourth chapter, in the discourse we are 
studying, He speaks of a coming tribulation in which the 
sun shall be darkened and the moon withdraw her light, 
and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of 
the heavens be shaken, and all the tribes of the earth 
shall mourn when they shall see the Son of Man coming 
in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 
" And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a 
trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from 
the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. . . 
Verily, I say unto you, This generation shall not pass 
away until all these things be accomplished " (vs. 29-35). 

Now, whatever consummating fulfilment of these words 
the future may disclose, we cannot overlook the fact 
that, as Luke phrases it (xxi. 28), Jesus declared they 
should "begin to come to pass " during the life-time of 
His first disciples. On the day of Pentecost Peter 
assured the people that they might know that God had 
made the crucified Jesus both Lord and Christ. And 
Paul assures us (Ephes. i ; Col. i) that, in raising Him 
from the dead, the Father hath now exalted Him Head 
over all the powers and forces that rule in this system 
of Creation, which are the angels of His might. In a 
most important sense He has entered now upon His 



Matt. xxv. 31-46. 121 

office as King and Judge of men, with all the powers of 
Nature as His angels. We most firmly believe in the 
future revelatioit of Him in this high office. We know 
that it is now administered behind the clouds, and with 
a veiled hand. The clouds are to be rent. The King is 
to be made manifest. But it is none the less true that 
the Son of Man has already come into His kingdom, and 
that He is now judging the world in righteousness, and 
that He is now sorting between sheep and goats, bestow- 
ing upon the one class eternal life, and banishing the 
other to the eternal fire. 

6. This interpretation, which locates this judgment- 
scene in this present age (aiwv) and before the resurrec- 
tion, which introduces the age or world to come, is 
required by all the Scripture teaching concerning death 
and resurrection. If there is anything fixed in its testi- 
mony it is that the wages of sin is death. In some form 
the idea of the dissolution or destruction of man's 
embodied being enters into every passage which speaks 
of future punishment. Our previous studies have shown 
us that the Old Testament " Sheol " and the New Testa- 
men " Hell " alike represent this pit of destruction. 
All previous references in the words of Jesus to the 
eternal fire (see Matt, xviii. 8-9; Mark ix. 43-48) show 
that it belongs under this same category. And, there- 
fore, this sentence, " Depart, ye cursed, into the eternal 
fire, ,, is essentially a death sentence. Our last study of 
this term is convincing on this point. And resurrection 
is essentially recovery from death. It lies at the other 
pole of the divine dealing. It is the rehabilitation of the 
lost spirit of man, outcast in death. It is its emancipa- 



122 The Fire of GocPs Anger. 

tion from the bands of Sheol, its reinvestiture with man- 
hood. For embodiment is essential to manhood. 
Hence, resurrection is always referred to the redeeming 
work of Christ (Rom, v. 12-20; 1 Cor. xv. 22). All this 
harmonizes with the view we have taken of this passage. 
The ungodly class spoken of are living men, not once 
dead and raised again, who have been tried by the test 
of Christ's gospel and are found wanting. Such are 
adjudged to death as unworthy of eternal life. The 
eternal fire which consumes them is but another name 
for that devouring energy of nature which is continually 
drawing down into the vortex of death the sin-blighted 
bodies and souls of men. 

7. But a most convincing proof that this is not a post- 
resurrection judgment is that such an interpretation 
requires us to suppose that God has made promises 
which can never be fulfilled. This view assumes that 
the doom of all mankind is irrevocably fixed by death, 
that the resurrection of the immense portion of it who 
have not known Christ is simply for purposes of judg- 
ment. But all our studies in the Old Testament have 
taught us that the gracious purposes of God toward 
mankind can be fully accomplished in no other way 
than through a resurrection. If death has forever put it 
out of His power to bless or to show compassion towards 
these countless myriads, then there are abundant hints 
and types and emphatic promises which come to naught. 
We have so often referred to these that it is not necessary 
again to repeat them. Suffice to say they are all an 
expansion of that primary redemption promise made to 
Abraham, which the Bible so often refers to and repeats 7 



Matt. xxv. 31-4.6. 123 

that in a chosen seed all the families of the earth should 
be blessed, and of that still deeper secret stored up in 
the Song of Moses (Deut xxxii) that, while the fire of 
God's anger against all evil-doers must burn to the 
lowest hell, this same fire of judgment must burn against 
the enemies that have fastened this yoke of bondage to 
corruption upon the human race, and bring to it a deliv- 
erance, in hope of which the nations are called upon to 
rejoice with His people. Nor are these promises confined 
to the Old Testament. They are taken up and amplified 
in the New. The prophecies with which the birth cf 
the infant Jesus was accompanied, the Song of Mary 
(Luke i. 46-55), of Zacharias (68-79), of Simeon (ii. 29-32), 
condense these precious promises and joyfully declare 
that now at length they were to be fulfilled. The mercy 
promised to the fathers was to be performed. Through 
the tender mercy of God the long-promised day 01 
redemption was about to break upon them who were 
sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death. The 
light had arisen to lighten the Gentiles and the glory 01 
His people Israel. It is worthy of remark that during 
the earthly ministry of Jesus He does not Himself often 
repeat or refer to these glowing prophecies. Their full 
meaning was held in abeyance until after His resurrection, 
A veil was upon the hearts of even His disciples both as to 
the fact of this great event and its scope. It was only 
after its occurrence that their understanding was opened 
to discern what flood of light was cast upon these ancient 
promises by their Lord's triumph over death. This 
explains why the views of human destiny given in the 
words of Jesus seem so much more severe than those 



124 The Fire of God's Anger. 

given in the first sermons and letters of trie apostles e 
Men were not ready for the light until the Morning Star 
had risen above the night of the grave and the gloom of 
hell. But, in the preaching at Pentecost it begins at 
once to break forth. Peter declares that the crucified 
Jesus was now enthroned in the heavens as the pledge 
and the accomplisher of those times of restitution of all 
things of which God had spoken by the mouth of all 
His holy prophets since the world began (Acts iii. 21-26). 
And Paul's preaching sums itself up in the assertion that 
Jesus Christ had come to fulfil all the promises made to 
the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for 
His mercy (Rom. xv. 8-9). Now, if our study of these 
old promises has proved anything, it has proved that 
they require the deliverance of mankind, Jew and Gen- 
tile, from that pit of death into which sin has cast the 
human race. How otherwise can the promised seed 
bring blessing to all the kindreds of the earth? Are 
not the dead a part of this " all " ? Are they not a part 
of the all flesh who shall see the salvation of God ? and 
of the " all people " for whom a feast of fat things is 
prepared in that mountain upon which the Lord God 
shall swallow up death in victory ? (Is. xxv. 6-8.) We 
have repeatedly discriminated between this hope of a' 
universal redemption from death and universal salvation.' 
But the point we now make is that since the Old Testa- 
ment in numerous passages, both in type and prophecy, 
predicts blessing in store for unregenerate Israel (Hosea 
xiii. 9-14), and for nations lost in death, such as Egypt 
and Sodom and Moab and Edom, through a redemption 
from captivity to death, the final destiny of all mankind 



Matt. xxv. 31-4.6. 125 

can not be everlastingly fixed at death. And, therefore, 
this scene in Matt, xxv cannot be one in which " all the 
nations " are raised and gathered before a judgment seat 
for their eternal award. It must relate to a doom to hell 
which precedes resurrection, and from which it is a 
deliverance. 

8. Nor does the test of character here given agree 
with the thought that all the generations of the dead are 
here assembled. There is little doubt but that the 
human race has lived a much longer time on this planet 
than our common chronology provides for. How could 
all the swarming myriads of pre-historic times, how 
could the men before the flood, or even the heathen and 
barbarous tribes of our own day, be tried by the test 
here proposed,—" Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one 
of the least of these my brethren ye did it not to me " ? 

These considerations furnish then ample reason for 
our rejection of the ordinary view that this passage 
describes a last general judgment of the whole of 
mankind, dead and living, at one great assize. It is 
the vision of a work of judgment which Jesns assured 
His hearers was to begin before that generation passed 
away. The Son of Man was shortly to enter upon His 
glory as the King and Judge of men. His gospel was 
to be preached to u all the nations." Men were every- 
where to be tried and sifted by it. Those to whom it 
proved a word of life, and in whom the Christ-nature 
was formed, would enter into eternal life. All others, 
even though they had refused Christ in ignorance, must 
depart into the eternal fire. No power of divine life in 
them could carry them safely through the crisis of death 



126 The Fire of God's Anger. 

or hold them up from sinking into the abyss. Thus, 
the sorting between sheep and goats has been going on 
ever since Jesus was enthroned. Nor does this view exclude 
the thought of a consummation of this judgment work 
at the close of this gospel age, nor diminish the force of 
the Scripture testimony to a future revelation of Him in 
this high office. His Apocalypse will be the unvailing 
of Him in His now hidden character as the world's 
King and Judge, but by no means His first assumption 
of these offices. 

We have thus found that this whole judgment-scene 
relates to the trial and the punishment to which men are 
subjected before their resurrection. And, therefore, the 
terms " eternal fire " and " eternal punishment " must be 
interpreted in subordination to this thought. 

It has been long and widely assumed that the adjec- 
tive " eternal " is here the necessary equivalent of" end- 
less." And that, therefore, the doom here pronounced 
must be interminable. This consideration will be enough* 
in the minds of superficial readers to rule out every 
suggestion of possible change or limit to the damnation 
of the lost. And, with the ordinary traditional view that 
the passage describes the judgment, after a general 
resurrection, of all who have ever lived, this inference 
from the use of the word " eternal " is almost irresistible. 
But the falsity of this view has been demonstrated. 
Moreover, we have found it wholly inconsistent and 
irreconcilable with the uniform teaching of Scripture 
concerning the nature and scope of resurrection, and of 
the promises involved in it and made dependent on it. 
If this word " eternal " here holds us to a doctrine of 



Matt. xxv. 31-4.6. 127 

endless misery for all who have died in their sins, and 
to a denial of all those gleams of hope for the unsaved 
nations of the past which flash out on so many pages of 
Old Testament prophecy, rather than deny these we had 
better even resort for relief to a principle laid down in a 
recent lecture by Dr. A. A. Hodge, in which he said, 
" When I read the Bible, I confess I am never absolutely 
convinced by one text. It is a habit of the mind, per- 
haps, because the thought will arise, How do you know 
that this text is sure, How do you know there is no 
error in the transcript, How do you know there is not 
some error in the interpretation ? I do not believe God 
ever meant us to believe in a great doctrine upon a single 
text. But, when the truth is interwoven and associated 
in the record as a condition of the history ; when it is 
taken up and interwoven in the whole scheme of 
redemption, and afterwards as the very basis of God's 
treatment of man under all conditions, . . . you cannot 
touch such a truth without destroying the whole scheme 
of redemption, and it is just because it has been inter- 
woven into the whole scheme.'' 

Now, this applies to the case before us. It is not too 
much to say that the doctrine of an endless hell for all 
who die unsaved rests almost wholly upon this one text, 
" These shall go away into everlasting punishment." 
This is its main pillar and its bulwark. By this we do 
not mean that there are not a great many other passages 
relied upon. But it will be found that their interpreta- 
tion takes its coloring from this passage. The falsehood 
in interpretation which locates this judgment-scene after 
the resurrection has thrown its baleful glare over these 



128 The Fire of God's Anger. 

other passages and covered them with its gloom. We have 
already seen that all the previous references of Jesus to 
a hell of fire relate to a present impending destruction 
of man's present embodied being, both body and " soul " 
(as distinct from " spirit ") in that pit which God's 
natural and moral laws have dug beneath the very foun- 
dations of unrighteous being, but that this destruction 
of the wicked does not preclude the hope of a resurrec- 
tion out of this abyss. And so with all the plainer 
passages, Old Testament and New, which set forth the 
doom of the sinner. The few more obscure passages of 
the Apocalypse we purpose to examine hereafter. 
There is, for instance, but one passage in all of St. 
Paul's recorded sermons or epistles which may be 
regarded as parallel to this 46th verse, or which appears 
to teach the doctrine of endless punishment for the sins 
of this life. We refer to 2 Thess. i. 9, " Who shall 
suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face 
of the Lord and from the glory of His might, when He 
shall come to be glorified in His saints " (R. V.). But, 
if it had not been for the assumption that the sentence 
in Matthew was to an everlasting punishment of men 
raised from death to be judged, no one would have 
thought that the punishment referred to by Paul was to 
be inflicted on resurrected men. The whole context 
presupposes a generation of ungodly men, living on the 
earth, who are overtaken by the fiery judgment which 
shall accompany the manifestation of the Lord Jesus 
from heaven. And as even for such there is provided a 
future resurrection, however long delayed, the destruc- 
tion threatened must consist with this promised re- 



Matt. xxv. 31-46. 129 

construction. For resurrection is essentially the recon- 
struction of man's embodied being destroyed in death 
and hell. 

We say then, in accordance with Dr. Hodge's principle, 
that even if we were tied up to the belief that this 46th 
verse teaches the common doctrine of endless punish- 
ment, the claims of this single passage, the bulwark of 
all the rest, must yield to the current teaching of all 
Scripture that even the resurrection of the unjust is 
included in the great redemption hope (Acts xxiv. 15). 
Better that its authority be impugned in the way 
he suggests than that it be allowed to pervert and cloud 
the meaning of the great promises which God has 
spoken through all the ages by the mouth of holy 
prophets, and which underlie His whole redemption 
plan. 

But happily we are not obliged to resort to any such 
questionable method of dealing with this text. Its 
authority stands unimpeached, and we would not dare 
dispute it. All the relief needed, and all that is 
required to harmonize it with all Scripture, is the simple 
recognition of this primary principle that resurrection 
recovers from the eternal fire. 

With regard to the force of this adjective " eternal " in 
connection with " punishment " two explanations are 
possible. 

1. The Greek adjective aionion, like the Hebrew 
Ifllam which it translates, is not the precise equivalent of 
the English word " endless." We freely admit that it 
may have that meaning. When Paul speaks, for 
example, of the v eternal God " (Rom. xvi. 26), there 
9 



130 The Fire of God's Anger. 

can be no limit to the duration which the term implies. 
But when in the previous verse he uses the same 
adjective, and speaks of " eternal times " during which 
the mystery of the Christ had been kept hidden, it is 
manifest that these " times " were not endless. The 
force of the word aionion cannot therefore be determined 
apart from the noun with which it is used, and apart 
from the context. All Greek scholars know that the 
word admits of this varied meaning. No one claims 
that the word auov from which it is derived equals our 
word " eternity." It always defines an age, or dispensa- 
tion, or economy. Its frequent use in the plural shows 
that there are many such " ages " or " worlds " marked 
off from the eternity in which God is unfolding His 
purposes. The " eternal fire " therefore, as we saw in 
our previous study, pertains to and characterizes this exist- 
ing economy of creation, out of which the devil and his 
angels, the evil powers of the system, are hereafter to be 
destroyed. The eternal punishment would then be that 
destruction awaiting imperfect and sinful men which is 
the law of this present order (cosmos), and which wicked 
men, who belong to it, must experience until the system 
to which they belong is delivered from its bondage to 
corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of 
God (Rom. viii. 19-23). With this deliverance their 
resurrection is somehow bound up. And, therefore, their 
eternal punishment would not be endless, but an age-during 
one. Such an interpretation not only does not violate, 
it fully preserves the proper force of the word aionion. 
And no small proportion of our best scholars insist that 
this is its only etymological and legitimate meaning. 



Matt. xxv. 31-46. 131 

For instance, Robert Young, whose Analytical Concord- 
ance is on the book-shelves of every Bible scholar, in his 
version of the Scriptures, uniformly translates it M age- 
during " wherever it occurs. 

2. But, if any insist that this limitation of the word as 
applied to punishment must limit also the life promised, 
and that if the life be endless, the punishment spoken of 
in the same verse must be also endless, even this view 
may be harmonized with that Scripture doctrine of 
resurrection which makes it a '" hope." The word 
punishment here is xokaetq. By consulting Liddell and 
Scott, or any good Greek Lexicon, it will be seen that 
there are two principal Greek terms for il punishment.' ' 
The one, Ttfiwpta as defined by Aristotle (Rhet. i. 10, 17) 
means retributive penalty. While xoXatrt^ means corrective 
punishment. Its primary meaning is a " cutting off" or 
" pruning." We have already seen that the sinner is 
excluded from the life and happiness of the Son of 
Man's kingdom and shut up in the gloom of hell until 
delivered through resurrection. But we have never 
supposed or taught that this recovery would introduce 
him to the life and blessedness of the righteous. He 
can never share in the dignity and glory of " the church 
of the first born." Some of the wicked will rise but to 
abuse and forfeit again the renewed gift of life and to 
perish in the second death. Many may be brought 
back only to those outer circles of life which are far 
removed " from the presence of the Lord and from the 
glory of His power," and which shall perpetuate their 
banishment (*bla<ni). They may be forever cut off from 
the honor and blessedness of heirship in His kingdom. 



132 The Fire of GocTs Anger. 

They may experience there forever the " suffering of 
loss " and the shame of degradation. And yet for all 
this their restoration to life and to any place in the ranks 
of God's creatures, and any tenure in His created system, 
may be a great blessing. Better the outmost verge of 
the realms of life and manhood than the outer dark- 
ness and nakedness of hell. And thus we see how a 
doctrine of everlasting punishment may be held which is 
not one of endless misery, and how this banishment 
from heirship in the kingdom may be perpetual with 
multitudes of those who are yet brought back from 
death by the power of Christ's resurrection, and within 
the sphere of that victorious reign of life and bounty by 
which He shall reconcile all things unto God. And so 
the strictest adherence to the verbiage of this text need 
not quench in any of our souls the light and peace of 
that universal resurrection hope which is God's sunrise 
upon the darkness and misery of the world's long night 
of sin and woe. 

It is important, however, to remember that the truth 
of the main principle in our interpretation of this passage 
is not dependent upon our efforts to explain this last 
verse in harmony with it. If neither of the two modes 
above suggested be satisfactory, we must still hold that 
the principle is true. Some mode of adjustment will be 
found when we come to know more of man, of his place 
in the present constitution of the natural and moral 
world; and more of God, and of His great plan of 
Creation and Redemption, the deepest facts of which are 
a righteousness that adjudges to death all that does not 
share in the perfect nature of His Son, in whom all 



Matt. xxv. 31-4.6. 133 

things were created and by whom all things consist (Col. 1. 
16-18), and a love that floods again with restoring 
and advancing life even the realms of death. 

There are two a priori arguments which ought to be 
mentioned as making the proof complete that the view 
we have taken of this judgment-passage is correct. 
They might have found place at the outset but they will 
be just as forcible at the close. Two things make it 
antecedently improbable, and even impossible, that the 
long-received interpretation of this passage can be true. 
The first is the utter silence of the Old Testament upon 
this doctrine of endless torment; and the second, its 
utter incongruity with all that Scripture teaches, and all 
that enlightened Christian consciousness affirms of the 
character of God. 

I. There are three passages indeed in the later Old 
Testament Scriptures (Is. xxxiii. 14; lxvi. 24; Dan. xii. 
2) which have been confidently appealed to as teaching 
this doctrine. We have before shown that they cannot 
be made to bear this interpretation. All the best 
modern critics reject it. But, granting all that can be 
claimed from these supposed allusions to an endless 
fiery punishment we still ask, How can it be possible, if, 
from the dawn of history, all mankind have been exposed 
to the awful risk of this incalculable doom, made depend- 
ent upon the issues of this brief human life, not a word 
should have been said about it for thousands of years? 
We heard recently a very conservative minister of the 
most orthodox church admit that his special study of 
the subject had convinced him that the human race had 
lived upon this planet for at least thirty thousand years. 



134 The Fire of God's Anger. 

However this may be, it is certain that God has suffered 
countless generations of mankind to come and go with- 
out one word concerning this awful fate which over- 
hung them. The five books of Moses, in which He 
made a special revelation to His chosen people and gave 
them laws, with penalties and rewards, are wholly silent 
here. Can it be possible, if such endless woe was to 
follow the unforsaken sins of this brief life, He would 
not have warned His own people of the danger ? We 
are asked to believe that Jesus, in a book written 
expressly to show that He came to fulfil and confirm 
all that Moses and the prophets had spoken, teaches a 
doctrine concerning human destiny of the most tremen- 
dous and inconceivable importance to every human 
being, about which His Spirit speaking through the 
prophets had been, to say the least, so long reticent. 
And still more impossible is this to believe when we 
consider that the revelation of God in Christ was 
designed to bring out mere fully the gracious aspects of 
His character, and to teach men, as never before, to 
revere and love Him as our Father in heaven. Is the 
God of the New Testament so incomparably more severe 
in His dealings with the children of men than was the 
Jehovah of the old ? 

2. And this brings us to observe that it is impossible 
to reconcile the traditional view of this passage with the 
idea of God as imprinted by His Spirit upon the sacred 
page and upon the renewed heart. No elaborate proof 
of these statements is required. The man who does not 
see and feel their truth would not be convinced by proof. 
But, sure we are that, however the lurid fire of His 



Matt. xxv. 31-4.6. 135 

wrath gleams out along the surface of these pages, the 
profound student of them will be convinced that His 
Name is love. Such an one cannot find it possible to 
believe th?t that God whose " tender mercies are over 
all His works/' of whom Jesus said that if we would be 
perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, we must learn 
to love our enemies, to be merciful as He is merciful, to 
forgive them that trespass against us as He forgives, to 
be kind to the evil and the unthankful (Luke vi. 27*37), 
and who gave His Son to be the propitiation for our 
sins, " not that we loved God, but that He loved us " 
(1 John iv. 10), can be the God which the ordinary 
theory of this passage requires us to suppose. 

Nor can we believe that this view of Him can ever 
agree with that image of God which it is the office of 
His Spirit to form within those who are being created in 
Christ Jesus unto good works. The whole history of 
His church, the lives of the best Christians we know, 
show that those who are most like Him are the most 
merciful and humane and compassionate. They are the 
ones who build hospitals and endow charities, and visit 
prisons, and minister to the poor and the sick, just as 
this passage describes. They lay down their lives for 
the good of their fellow men, even the vicious and the 
debased, as well as for the brethren. Can this Christ 
then, who is thus formed in them, change His attitude so 
utterly toward the sinful and the undeserving ? Can He 
make it forever impossible that His saints shall do any- 
thing more for these poor lost ones ? " Will the Lord 
cast off forever ? and will He be favorable no more ? Is 
His mercy clean gone forever? doth His promise fail 



L36 The Fire of God's Anger. 

forevermore ? Hath God forgotten to be gracious ? hath 
He in anger shut up His tender mercies ?" (Ps. lxxvii. 8.) 

Some interpretation of this passage must be sought 
which shall preserve to us all that we have learned of 
God, and which shall not run counter to all the instincts 
which His own Spirit has begotten in our breasts. 
Even if the one we have suggested be not the one, such 
an one must be sought somewhere, for God cannot con- 
tradict Himself. 

But we submit that this great Scripture principle, and 
this true* " eternal hope " of redemption through resur- 
rection, furnishes just the key to solve the mystery. 
On the one hand it makes ample provision for 
the satisfying of every claim of God's right- 
eousness in the sinner's perdition. He must lose his 
body and soul in hell. His spirit must be cast out from 
that tenure in God's universe which embodiment in 
manhood gave it, into the outer darkness. But, as in all 
God's realms life succeeds to death, re-creation to disso- 
lution, so this field of death must yield its harvest. 
" Every man in his own order " and ft to every seed his 
own body." Now that death has done its work, the 
sentence executed, and the law satisfied, the field is 
cleared for grace to come in. And so " all shall be 
made alive ; " the unjust not to eternal life, but to a 
restored life in manhood that shall bring them once more 



*We apply this word to this hope in order to distinguish it from the false 
" eternal hope '* which flatters sinful men with tbe idea that there is no 
damnation from which they need immediate salvation, and which promise* 
a prolongation of the opportunities of this life through an «■ intermediate 
state" before judgment. 



Matt. xxv. 31-4.6. 137 

within the circle of those administrations of blessing of 
which Christ the Life-giver is the Source. Many may 
be brought only within the outer verge of that circle and 
fall again out of it into a second death. But when once 
we have apprehended the fact and the scope of God's 
gracious provision through death to redeem from death, 
all truth about punishment for sin and about the future 
of those countless multitudes of the race who have gone 
down to death under it, will sooner or later fall into its 
right place. As their " being turned into hell " makes 
room for the fullest exhibition of God's righteousness in 
their condemnation, so their resurrection will make room 
for the amplest fulfilment of all His designs in their 
creation, and all the purposes and promises of grace with 
which His word is fraught. Any explanation of these 
mysteries of the future which leaves out either side of 
this dealing must draw a veil over the face of our Father 
God, and hide His true character from men. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE RESURRECTION OF JUDGMENT. 

" Marvel not at this : for the hour cometh in which all that are 
in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth ; they that 
have done good unto the resurrection of life ; and they that have 
done ill unto the resurrection of judgment" ( John v. 29, R. V.). 

This is another of the passages which is generally re- 
garded as teaching that the judgment of wicked men, 
and their weight of doom, are fixed for a period after 
their resurrection. 

This long-accepted view has been favored by the 
authorized version which, in this case, is also a com- 
mentary. Instead of li the resurrection of damnation/' 
which phrase at once suggests that the wicked are raised 
in order to be damned, the New Version more correctly 
reads, " the resurrection of judgment/' 

I. That the resurrection does not introduce this class 
to a formal trial to determine their fitness for eternal life 
is proved from the fact that they have been " judged 
already" (John iii. 18, R. V.), and the penalty of sin, 
which is death, has already been inflicted upon them. 
This " death " is more than the death of the body. 
Beyond it there is for the wicked the loss of the " soul," 
which wh have seen to be a constituent of embodied 
manhood. The soul may be destroyed in hell, although 
as the more subtle part of the spirit's embodiment, it 
may long survive and suffer there, as the case of Dives 
illustrates. This rich man was evidently sentenced and 
doomed before his resurrection. We cannot therefore 
suppose that "the resurrection of judgment " is pre- 

138 



The Resurrection of Judgrne?it. 139 

paratorytoa trial, or to the infliction of a doom which the 
unhappy subject has been already suffering under for 
perhaps a thousand years. It is worth noting that the 
phrase "the day of judgment " occurs uniformly in the 
Greek without the article, save in one instance 
(i John. iv. 17), where the ordeal through which the 
Christian is to pass is in view. And nothing is further 
from the teaching of Scripture than the idea that the 
punishment of the wicked is reserved against some such 
special day. " After death cometh judgment " (Heb. ix. 
27). The confirmation which this idea has received 
from 2 Peter ii. 9, " The Lord knoweth how to deliver 
the godly out of temptation, and to reserve the unjust 
unto the day of judgment to be punished," is dispelled 
by the truer rendering of the New Version, 4 * The Lord 
knoweth how . . . to keep the unrighteous under punishment 
unto the day of judgment. 1 ' This accords with what we 
have found to be the uniform Scriptural conception of the 
punishment of the wicked. The Old Testament always 
views them as turned into hell, or sheol, at death. There 
they must abide as captives and prisoners. Our Lord's 
teaching we have seen to be in perfect harmony with 
this. Only He brings out into greater prominence the 
fact that the soul of man, as well as his body, may be 
destroyed in this pit, and that this process of destruction 
is a process of suffering. The loss of both body and 
soul leaves the 4< spirit " naked and outcast. The 
" soul " of the righteous man is preserved from de- 
struction. Hence he is never compeletely disembodied. 
Disembodiment, for man, is essentially punitive. It 
casts him out of his inheritance. The " evil spirits " of 



140 The Fire of God's Anger. 

Scripture are always disembodied beings. All this goes to 
show that the ungodly, through the whole period be- 
fore resurrection, are " kept under punishment," as the 
passage quoted from St. Peter states, and not reserved 
for punishment. And with this view we found the 
leading passage which sets forth their punishment, Matt. 
xxv. 31-46, to be consistent. Indeed, we believe this 
notion, that the sinner's punishment is not immediate, 
and that the bulk of it is reserved for infliction after his 
resurrection, to be wholly false and unscriptural. It is 
this which lies at the bottom of all that is defective and 
monstrous in our modern eschatology. And, therefore, 
we are required to look for some other meaning for 
"the resurrection of judgment" than that which makes 
it preliminary to a doom which has already been pro- 
nounced, and to a sentence already executed. We may 
be sure that God will not bring His doomed creatures 
out of hell merely for the purposes of a scenic display 
before a judgment seat, and in order to hurl them back 
again into the pit from which they were brought out. 

Nor is there any weight in the consideration often 
advanced that, as man sins in the body, his punishment 
cannot be completed until his entire personality is re- 
stored through a resurrection of the body, and that as 
the body was the instrument of his sin, so it must be 
made the avenue of his suffering. Those who so urge 
forget that this is precisely the form in which punish- 
ment reaches the sinner before resurrection. Even be- 
fore physical death, sin corrupts and debases the body. 
Men sometimes suffer the torments of the damned 
through the channel of its organs and nerves this side 



The Resurrection of Judgment. 141 

of the grave. And the dissolution of the body, — what 
is this but the direct judgment of God upon this human 
fabric through which He gives us title and heritage in 
this created system? In death it is wrenched asunder 
and taken to pieces. We have already spoken of the 
protracted torment which the " soul " may experience in 
this dissolution, before the " spirit" is wrenched from it 
and driven into the outer darkness. Why then is it 
necessary to raise up the body in order that it may ex- 
perience sin's penalty when, under the weight of that 
penalty, it has already been debased and crushed and 
dissevered and destroyed ? We ask again, of what other 
body than this present structure in manhood is Jesus 
speaking, when He exhorts us to pluck out an eye or 
lop off a limb, if these cause us to offend, rather 
than lose the whole body in hell? Which one of His 
hearers would imagine that He was speaking of the 
sinner's future resurrection body? The Jews, if w r e may 
believe the testimony of Josephus and of their Rabbis, 
did not look for the resurrection of the wicked at all. 
" Only the souls of good men are removed into other 
bodies." * It is only through gross failure to recognize 
what the threatened punishment for sin is, that such per- 
version of our Saviour's words is possible as this transfer 
of the destruction which overhangs the embodied life 
with which men are now endowed, to a resurrected body 
of the remote future. 

II. What then is "the resurrection of judgment ? " 
I. It is something which is in sharp contrast to the 



#Jewish War, Book II. Chap. 3. Alger, pg. 170. 



142 The Fire of God's Anger. 

"resurrection of life" which is the portion of the right- 
eous. Their resurrection must be a complete investi- 
ture in that glorified manhood in which Jesus was raised. 
The righteous have now eternal life. We have seen 
also that death does not deprive them of this gift, nor 
cast them out naked and desolate. The soul of the 
righteous is delivered from going down to hell. Hence 
he is not found naked. A building of God awaits him 
upon the dissolution of his earthy tabernacle (2 Cor. v.). 
And in it he awaits the time of the complete redemption 
of his body, when it shall be fashioned like unto His 
glorious body. For his destiny as a joint heir with 
Christ to all the Father's vast estate requires that he 
have a body which shall put him into complete posses- 
sion of these works of God, and be a worthy vehicle for 
His eternal life. Such is the resurrection of life. * 

The resurrection of judgment must be such as shall at 
once condemn its subjects as unworthy of this life and 
inheritance. There is but one order of manhood capable 
of this dignity,— that which is conformed to the Son of 
Man, to whom the Father hath committed all judgment. 
He is the standard of admission. All who fall below 
that standard cannot be raised in eternal life. They fall 
into a lower rank. Their resurrection is their condem- 
nation. It is to be borne in mind that what we are con- 
sidering is the resurrection of judgment, and not unto 
judgment. The genitive here is of character. It expresses 
a characteristic quality by which this resurrection is 
distinguished from the resurrection of life. And this leads 
us to speak of the nature of this lower order of being in 
which the wicked dead come forth. * Appendix a. 



The Resurrection of Judgment. 1J3 

Scripture speaks of but two orders of manhood, the 
earthy arid the heavenly. Of these two, Adam and the 
risen Christ are the heads. Each of these has its own 
embodiment. The one is spoken of as a a body of 
humiliation/' the other as a u body of glory " (Phil. iii. 
2i). St. Paul speaks also of ''celestial bodies " and 
" bodies terrestrial" (i Cor. xv. 40). Now we cannot 
conceive of the wicked as raised in the celestial order. 
As for wicked spirits and Satan, they have no bodies. 
They are never once spoken of in Scripture as having 
bodies of their own, although eager to take possession 
of the bodies of men and even of swine. The fact that 
the wicked are raised at all implies that they are lifted 
above this order of bodiless demons. They are invested 
again with human bodies ; and as these can not be of 
the heavenly order, they must be of the earthy. Their 
bodies must be therefore mortal and corruptible. This 
is further proved in the fact that they are capable of 
the second death, as distinguished from the bodies of 
the risen saints who cannot be hurt of it (Rev. xx. 6). To 
maintain that the wicked are raised in immortal bodies 
we shall have to invent an order of embodied beings of 
which Scripture gives no instance and makes no men- 
tion. No such monstrosity is there conceived of as an 
evil being, immortally embodied. We are forced there- 
fore to conclude that their risen bodies will be terrestial, 
mortal, and corruptible. And this will be the main 
feature which shall mark their resurrection as one of 
judgment, in contrast with that of the saints which will 
be to unfettered life. For this Adamic manhood comes 
of necessity into bondage to corruption. It is only the 



144 The Fire of GocFs Anger. 

Christ-man who is superior to this whole system, and 
who is its immortal sovereign. Jesus, in rising from the 
dead, broke through all its trammels, spoiled its princi- 
palities and powerSj and passed on to its summit, sub- 
jecting all its realms of life and all its forces to His con- 
trol. And to as many as receive Him, to them also does 
He give power to become the sons of God. But all 
other men must come back to life still in bondage to the 
creature, and liable to its corruption and death. More- 
over, their resurrection must be long delayed. We shall 
greatly err if we suppose that the resurrection of all men 
is simultaneous. " Every man in his own order." 

It is manifest also that these harvest fields of death 
must be reaped according to the universal law, " To 
every seed his own body." We cannot indeed regard 
resurrection itself as ever a penalty for sin. It enters 
into the very idea of it that it is a blessing. It is the 
deliverance of the unjust from the death-penalty incurred 
by the sins of this life. Their reinstatement in manhood 
must be a result of God's gracious provision that all 
who died in Adam shall be made alive in Christ. And 
yet judgment must still come in to determine when their 
captivity shall end, the time and nature of their deliver- 
ance. The more the blight of sin has degraded and 
withered their lives, the lower down on the scale of man- 
hood they must begin again. This principle gives the 
fullest scope for compensations and adjustments in this 
resurrection of judgment. We are taught indeed that 
this principle of award wilJ be applied also to the saints. 
In a passage frequently misapplied to the judgment of 
the wicked (2 Cor. v. 10), and whose exact reading is, 



The Resurrection of Judgment. 145 

" For we must all be made manifest before the judgment 
seat of Christ that every one may receive the things 
through the body, according to what he hath done, 
whether good or bad," it is implied that the future bod- 
ies of saints will gather up and perpetuate the fruits of 
previous character. For the " we " of this chapter re- 
fers to this class alone. But the same principle must 
apply also to the resurrection of the wicked. For if 
there is anything universal in the economy of God, and 
profoundly true to all the laws of life, it is that embodi- 
ment carries with it both reward and penalty. It 
organizes character and determines destiny. The kind 
of body which a man has measures his possession and 
use of created things. It ennobles life or debases it. It 
unfetters the man for large aspirations and achievements 
and joys. Or it narrows his sphere, cripples and clogs 
his activities, and clouds his sky with despair and gloom. 
There must be room in God's future administrations for 
all orders and degrees of created life, as there is in the 
present. This law of resurrection, " To every seed his 
own body," must insure that there shall be not 
only a resurrection of life, and one of judgment, but in 
each of these fields every variety of career and destiny, 
according as it is written, " Whatsoever a man soweth 
that must he also reap.'' 

2. And this leads to the further observation that the 
resurrection of the unjust introduces them to judgment. 
Not as we have seen to another judicial trial to deter- 
mine their doom to hell. They have already suffered 
an utter bankruptcy of their being as men in that pit of 
destruction. Now they are brought out of it and rein- 
10 



146 The Fire of God's Anger. 

vested with the human life. But they are compelled to 
begin it over again, and perhaps far down the scale. 
And during it all they are under process of judgment, 
as men are in this world, subject to the judicial adminis- 
tration and the corrective discipline of God. The pri- 
mary use of the Greek word here (xpfotq), as distinguished 
from its synonyms, is of judgment as a process rather 
than an act. It often carries with it the idea of prolonged 
judicial administration, during which motives are sifted, 
results of conduct brought out, and character made 
manifest. It is in this broad sense that the word is used 
in the 23d verse, which declares that unto the Son, as 
the Quickener of the dead, hath the Father given all 
judgment; that all may honor the Son, even as they 
honor the Father. 

Here it is pertinent to remark that nowhere do the 
views of Christians concerning God's dealings with men 
need broadening more than in their notions of judg- 
ment. Our theology has but little use for this word 
save in its narrow, legal, and technical sense. But in 
Scripture this represents but a small part of the divine 
work of judgment, which is a benevolent as well as a 
judicial administration, and one for which the nations 
were to be glad, "All His ways are judgment ; a God 
of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He." 
And all nations shall come and worship before Him 
when His judgments are made manifest (Rev. x v. 4). 
His judgments are often directed to the benefit of those 
to whom they bring penalty. Nothing was more con- 
spicuous in Israel's history than the judgments con- 
stantly visited upon them for their sins. The Lord 



The Resnrrectio?i of Judgment. 147 

must judge His people. And yet when they humbled 
themselves under His mighty hand, He repented Him- 
self for His servants when He saw their power gone 
(Lev. xxvi. 41-45 ; Deut. xxxii. 36-43). Then, His 
judgments which seemed to be turned against them 
were made to be for them, and against the enemies who 
had brought them into their sad plight. His judgments 
are indeed a great deep, for they contemplate the over- 
throw of all those hostile powers who have brought this 
curse of sin and death upon man, and upon the created 
system of which he is the head. And, therefore, we are 
not to think it strange if to this resurrection of judg- 
ment there is a delivering and redeeming aspect. Man's 
present life is a process of judgment. The natural man 
is throughout it under judgment, yea, under an abiding 
wrath of God (John iii. 18, 36). So the unjust, in resur- 
rection, continue under judgment. But as this brings 
to men now corrective discipline, we may infer that this 
will be its character and issue in the life to come. Not 
that all men will by correction learn righteousness and 
be made heirs of eternal life. In some, sinful charac- 
ter will have hardened into such permanence as to be- 
come " eternal sin " (Mark iii. 29, R. V.). And for such 
as suffer the second death there would seem to be no 
second resurrection. And yet we shall fall far short of 
the intent and meaning of this resurrection of judgment, 
if we suppose that it is only preliminary to the sinner's 
deeper damnation. It is to all its subjects a recovery 
and a boon. It gives them another standing and oppor- 
tunity in life. It brings them within the sphere of those 
gracious operations of God of which the resurrection of 



148 The Fire of God's Anger, 

Christ is the centre. It makes room, as we have seen, 
for the fulfilment of great and precious promises to the 
human race, and to nations specifically mentioned as to be 
blessed through the Christ, and who are dead and gone.* 
These promises must prove a nullity if there is no such 
room beyond death for God to make them good. It 
provides also for the infant and imbecile portion of the 
race, without the necessity of supposing that all of this 
class belong now to the redeemed church of God. All 
that is necessary to make this passage fit in with all we 
have learned from the study of these ancient promises, 
and of the grand outlines of God's redeeming plan, is to 
divest our minds of that narrow view of His judgment 
which has become traditional, and we shall see that the 
resurrection of judgment makes room for all these feat- 
ures of blessing. While at the same time its punitive 
character is preserved. Even the setting of the judgment 
and the opening of the books in Daniel's vision (vii. n) 
was preparatory to something more than a judicial trial. 
It introduced an administration by which all peoples, 
nations, and languages were brought under the gracious 
dominion of the Son of man. And so in all His judg- 
ments, which are unsearchable, and His ways which are 
past finding out, we are to view them as connected with 
His great redemptive economy. Even the final picture 
of universal judgment given in Rev. xx. 11-15 is accom- 
panied by that glorious triumph over death and hell 

*Many obscure allusions to this gracious issue become luminous when once 
this key to Old Testament promises is found; e. g. in Ps. xxii 27-31 where the 
Messiah's resurrection-triumph is set forth. Among all the kindreds of the 
nations who shall worship before Him, verse 29 declares, «■ All they that go 
down to the dust (that is, the dead, see Gesenius sub voce) shall bow before 
Him ; even he that cannot keep his soul alive." 



The Resurrection of Judgment. 149 

which leaves them cast into the lake of fire. And it is 
followed by the vision of the new heaven and earth 
which is the goal of all our desires. 

It is therefore in accord with all God's wondrous ways 
that we regard the resurrection of judgment as a prelude 
to an administration, both gracious and corrective, over 
those multitudes of mankind who, in this life, were ignor- 
ant of God or shut up in unbelief. And such an ad- 
ministration we have seen to be positively required in 
order to make good to mankind the promises He spake 
by the mouth of all His holy prophets. 

To recapitulate, then, the leading features of this resur 
rection of judgment, we find: 

1. That it is not for the repetition of a sentence already 
pronounced, and of a penalty already inflicted. 

2. It is not unto life, that is, unto life unfettered and 
eternal. 

3. It is to a state of being not yet freed from bondage 
to death. Its subjects have not yet " passed from death 
unto life." They are still a under judgment.'' 

4. It is to an inferior, a mortal and corruptible 
body. No other life can keep a body immortal but 
eternal life. There is but one kind of immortal em- 
bodiment, the glorified manhood of Christ. There is 
no instance in Scripture of an order of evil beings 
immortally embodied. And the contemplation of such 
an order is foreign to the whole plan of Creation 
and redemption. 

5. It must introduce its subjects to that corrective 
discipline which characterizes every economy of God's 
judgments, in this age or the age to come. 



150 The Fire of God's Anger. 

6. It must issue, in the case of all who prove incor- 
rigible under this discipline, in a second death. 

7. The rehabilitation in life of men whom the judg- 
ment of God had consigned to death and hell is, how- 
ever, essentially a blessing, the fruit of that far-reaching 
redemption which secures the resurrection of even the 
unjust. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE JUDGE OF QUICK AND DEAD. 

This is one of the official titles of the Christ. The 
apostles constantly presented Him in this character to 
their hearers, and gave great prominence to it. In the 
first official proclamation of the gospel to the Gentiles 
by Peter in the house of Cornelius, he declares : u And 
He charged us to preach unto the people, and to testify 
that this is He which is ordained of God to be the Judge 
of quick and dead " (Acts x. 42). 

The term "quick" here is the translation of the Greek 
£d»7a». It occurs in several similar passages. It would 
have been better if the word were rendered uniformly 
"living," as we find it in Romans xiv. 9 : " For to this 
end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He 
might be Lord both of the dead and the living." The 
objection to the archaic word "quick" is that many 
readers refer it to those who are to be quickened at 
Christ's coming, and so virtually identify this class with 
the u dead," who are then to be raised. The word refers 
to the living masses of mankind as distinct from the 
dead. And the two words together are designed to 
include both classes, and to set forth the universal char- 
acter of the Messiah's judgment, as embracing all the 
families of the earth, both living and dead. This official 
title then comprehends the two aspects of His judgment 
which we have recently studied, and which are especially 
set forth in the two notable passages, Matt. xxv. 31-46 
and John v. 29. In the first, as we have seen, the Christ 

151 



152 The Fire of GocTs Anger. 

announces Himself as about to enter upon His glory as 
the Judge of the living nations of men. The scene, as 
we have seen, is laid before the resurrection. The sub- 
jects of the judgment are not dead men raised, but 
living men, the wicked among whom are consigned to 
death. But, in John v., we have the judgment of the 
resurrected dead. "All who are in their graves" come 
forth to "the resurrection of judgment." These two 
great passages then bring before us this two-fold aspect 
of the Messiah's office as the ordained "Judge of both 
the living and the dead." 

Here we have to enter our protest against the narrow 
view of this high office which prevails in the church, and 
has been crystallized in even its most ancient creeds. 
The common impression is that these words refer to a 
grand court and pageant of the future, and that the judi- 
cial function of the Christ is mainly that of Chief-assessor 
of this court, at which all mankind shall be assembled, 
and the eternal destiny of every one be irrevocably fixed. 
In order to correct this view, one needs to study well 
the Old Testament prophecies and promises of His judg- 
ment. We use the word "promises" because these 
passages, while they do not conceal the vindicatory and 
retributive features of His judicial work, give equal 
prominence to its reformatory and beneficent results. 
Hence all nations, and even the earth and its inanimate 
creatures, are invited to rejoice together because of His 
judgments, There is far more of promise than of threat 
in the announcement that He shall judge the world in 
righteousness (Psalms xcvi. xcviii. Is. xi. Jer. xxiii.). 
The great mistake in our eschatology is, that it has not 



The Judge of Quick and Dead. 153 

brought over from the Old Testament these large and 
gracious views of the Messiah's judgment, with which to 
fill in the outlines of that larger conception of the Christ 
as Judge, presented in the New Testament. His office 
is there more clearly defined as comprehending the dead 
as well as the living. But its beneficence is not dimin- 
ished by this enlargement. Because He is the Son of 
Man, all humanity is embraced by it. Not even the 
dead are shut out from its benefits. The resurrection of 
the Christ did not limit, it immensely enlarged the scope 
of His benign and saving work. " To this end Christ 
both died, and lived again, that He might be Lord, both 
of the dead and the living." The man who believes that 
death can in any way defeat His designs, or annul His 
promises, or limit the provisions of His grace, misses 
the very' key to the right understanding of the Bible. 
From this point of view our explanation of " the resur- 
rection of judgment/' as designed to bring the dead within 
the sphere of His judicial reign, is seen to be required by 
this whole Biblical conception of His office. And indeed 
the context of John v. 29 requires this. For it is there 
stated that the reason why all judgment has been given 
by the Father into the hands of the Son is, " that all men 
may honor the Son even as they honor the Father " 
(verse 23). And that the term " all men" includes the 
dead is seen in the fact which Jesus proceeds to declare, 
that the execution of this universal judgment requires an 
universal resurrection. All who are in their graves must 
hear His voice and come forth. This judgment does in- 
deed involve the trial of all men according to their works 
But it has also its corrective and benevolent features. 



254 The Fire of God's Anger. 

Resurrection is necessary in order to bring the gener- 
ations of the dead who have not known of Christ within 
the sphere of that knowledge of Him which may prove 
their salvation, and of that salutary control which shall 
humble them under His mighty hand. No one would 
think of denying that these large and merciful aspects of 
the Messiah's judgment of the world, as constantly set 
forth in the Old Testament, apply to the living nations of 
mankind; and that future generations of living men on 
the earth are to be thus blessed by it. But it is com- 
monly assumed that these promises contain no hope for 
the dead. We therefore need to learn that, in their deep- 
est meaning, and in the New Testament unfolding of 
them, this is precisely the glory of the Christ that He is 
" Lord both of the dead and of the living;" that He is 
Judge of both, and that His office of Judge, while it in- 
cludes that of Arbiter of all human destinies, embraces 
also those judicial administrations by which all men shall 
learn to call Him Lord, to the glory of God the Father; 
and that even the dead are to be brought within the 
scope of His judgment, in this wide sense of it, through 
resurrection. 

The announcement by the apostles, therefore, of Jesus 
as Judge of the quick and the dead, is part of His gospel. 
It was included in the glad tidings that they were sent 
forth to preach. When they testified that Jesus was now 
raised to be both Lord and Christ, they thereby affirmed 
that all the ancient promises concerning the Messiah 
were about to be fulfilled in Him, and that these prom- 
ises were so broad as to cover the realms of the dead as 
well as of the living. This gospel did indeed bring with 



The Judge of Quick and Dead. 155 

it severe and searching tests. It offered no other stand- 
ard of admission to God's presence than a clean heart. 
It foretold a purging of the world's floor by the flail of 
His judgments, and a burning up of the chaff with un- 
quenchable fire. The Old Testament prophecies had 
intimated as much. And yet there was always a glow 
of light on this dark back-ground. He would send forth 
judgment unto victory. And so the New Testament an- 
nouncements of the Christ as King and Judge of men 
form a part of the glad tidings of His salvation. And 
nothing was further from the minds of the apostles than 
to shut out all the generations of the dead from any in- 
terest in the good news. The fact that they longed for 
His coming in their own day, proves that, instead of 
viewing that event as putting an end to Christ's redeem- 
ing work, it would only then enter upon these wider 
fields of its conquest. 

It is also apparent from these announcements that the 
Christ has already assumed this office. We have been 
taught to believe that "He shall come to judge the quick 
and the dead." So far as the dead are concerned, they do 
not properly come under His reign of judgment until 
they are raised at His coming. They are raised in order 
to be thus judged. But the living are all the time being 
assembled before His throne, and being sorted into sheep 
and goats. Nor are the dead, even now, apart from His 
control. The terms used of His investiture with His 
office of Judge, show that it is not the vague and distant 
thing which men usually conceive it to be. At Athens 
Paul declared that God had appointed a day, in the which 
He is about to judge {j±i\Xzi xpwetv) the world in righteous- 



156 The Fire of God's Anger, 

ness, by that man whom He had ordained, the proof of 
which was that He had now raised Him from the dead 
(Acts xvii. 31). So again he charges Timothy (2. iv. 1) 
before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is about to 
judge the quick and the dead. The same Greek 
words are employed. And Peter (1 iv. 5) speaks 
of Him as "ready to judge the quick and the dead." And 
again, that " the time is come for judgment to begin at the 
house of God " (iv. 17). All these passages speak of the 
Christ as having already assumed this office, and as being 
on the point of executing it. Our exegesis of Matt. xxv. 
31-46 proved to us what reality there is in this concep- 
tion of His judgment. Indeed what the world, and the 
church also, need to-day, is such an opening of the eyes 
as was given to Elisha's servant, that men may see how 
the very atmosphere in which they live their daily life, is 
alive and tremulous with the chariots of His judgments. 
All the forces of nature are the angels of His might. 
Nor are we by any means sure that the judgment of the 
dead is wholly future. Such passages as 1 Peter iii. 19, 
20 and iv. 6 convey intimations that, at least in certain 
aspects of it, it began when He ascended on high, leading 
captivity captive. 

It will be SQen that we are all along pleading for a 
larger conception of His office as Judge than has prevailed 
in the church, — one that will make room for both the as- 
pects of it presented in Scripture, the retributive and the 
redemptive, and one that will take in the present age, as 
well as that which is to come. His judgment of the 
world in righteousness is a much nearer and broader 
work than men imagine it to be. The idea of a great 



The Judge of Quick and Dead. 157 

assize is certainly a scriptural one, but it is only one 
aspect of His judgment. Corrective discipline, afflictive 
strokes that humble even the disobedient to His yoke, 
benignant rule, the liberation of those who are held cap- 
tive by the chains of sin and Satan, and in the hands of 
death, the overthrow of these malign and potent enemies 
of man, the emancipation of the creature from their blight 
and corruption, the final destruction of incorrigible 
enemies, all these pertain to His office as " Judge of 
quick and dead," " the Lord both of the dead and of the 
living." If we view His office only in one of its func- 
tions, however important, we shall miss the meaning of 
the whole of it. Or if we limit the benefits of it to the 
living, we shall virtually deny that He is the Conqueror 
of death, or that there is any gospel for the dead in the 
fact that He died and rose again. And yet St. Peter as- 
sures us that He Himself preached these glad tidings to 
the spirits in prison, who aforetime were disobedient in 
the days of Noah (iii. 19), and that the gospel was, 
" preached even to the dead, that they might be judged 
according to men in the flesh, but live according to God 
in the Spirit " (iv. 6). 

In order to guard against mistake, we repeat what we 
have often before affirmed, that these wider views of the 
scope of Christ's redeeming work do not require us to 
believe that all will at last be saved by it. They only 
teach that death does not cut short or limit that work, 
but that, in providing resurrection, for all, it has provided 
to bring the kingdoms of the dead, as well as of the liv- 
ing, within its wide range of blessing. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE JUDGMENT OF THE GREAT WHITE 
THRONE. 

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat upon it, 
from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away ; and there 
was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, the great and 
the small, standing before the throne ; and books were opened ; 
and another book was opened, which is the book of life ; and the 
dead were judged out of the things which were written in the 
books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead 
which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which 
were in them ; and they were judged every man according to their 
works. And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. 
This is the second death, even the lake of fire. And if any was 
not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of 
fire. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth ; for the first 
heaven and the first earth were passed away. . . . And I heard a 
great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God 
is with men, and He shall dwell with them, and they shall be his 
people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God; 
and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes ; and death 
shall be no more ; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor 
pain any more ; the first things are passed away. And He that 
sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. Rev. 
xx. 1 1 — xxi. 5, N. V. 

The commonly accepted view of this passage is that 
it describes a simultaneous resurrection of all classes of 
mankind, good and evil, for the determination of their 
final destiny at one great assize. We shall find upon 
closer study that this is a mistake. It relates to the 
judgment of the unjust dead; and it corresponds there- 
fore to the last half of verse 29 in John v, in which our 

158 



The Judgment of the Great White Throne. 159 

Lord speaks of the " resurrection of judgment." That 
verse gives us indeed a general picture of all resurrection. 
It is only from other passages that we certainly deter- 
mine that resurrection is eclectic and progressive — that 
the saints come forth to "the resurrection of life" as a 
first-fruits company from among the dead (Phil. iii. 1 1, 
see Greek. I Cor. xv. 23, etc). The context of this pas- 
sage speaks definitely of " the first resurrection " (vs. 6 y 
7), and of the saints as living and reigning with Christ 
through a prolonged period before the judgment here 
described. Indeed we learn from such passages as Matt. 
xix. 28, I Cor. vi. 2, that they execute it. " Know ye 
not that the saints shall judge the world?" The judg- 
ment of the great white throne cannot therefore include 
this class, and to this extent at least is not universal. 
We believe, indeed, that the very office to which these 
first-born sons of God are called, under their Head, is to 
raise the dead and carry on, under Him, those adminis- 
trations by which the captives in Sheol shall, each in 
their own order, be recovered from its grasp. Hence 
this was made a feature in that miniature type of the 
kingdom of God which Jesus gave when He sent out the 
twelve saying, " And as ye go, Heal the sick, raise the 
dead " (Matt. x. 7, 8). It is probable that a barrier to 
the right understanding of this whole passage has been 
raised by the insertion into the text of verse 5, which 
was very likely at first a parenthetical comment put in 
the margin by some transcriber. The verse reads, " The 
rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should 
be finished." The oldest manuscript, the Sinaitic, and 
the Syriac Version, do not contain this verse. And it 



160 The Fire of God's Anger. 

certainly harmonizes better with all we have learned 
from the study of the Old Testament concerning God's 
purpose to redeem mankind from death through a resur- 
rection, to suppose that the " times of the kingdom/' 
here referred to as the reign of the saints with Christ, 
are throughout times of resurrection. The various 
orders of mankind would then be raised, not all at once, 
but as each class was fitted for it. But, whether the re- 
covery of these past generations is admitted to be thus 
progressive or not, the passage we are studying, which 
speaks of their judgment before the great white throne, 
must present to us pictorially the results of that trial 
and judgment to which resurrection introduces them. 

All our previous studies in this series have shown 
how vital and fundamental in the whole plan of Scrip- 
ture is this truth, that, from the beginning, God has pro- 
vided blessing for all the families of the earth through 
an anointed seed, and that this blessing can reach the 
vast majority of at least past generations only through 
their resurrection. No other passage in the Bible seems 
to militate against this view so strongly as the one now 
before us. We have already indicated, however, the 
way by which it may be brought into harmony with 
this primary truth. We have simply to regard it as pre- 
senting in a pictorial way the final results of that age, or 
those ages, of trial and judgment through which the 
nations are to be conducted by Christ and his risen 
saints, and to which they shall be introduced through a 
resurrection from the dead. The initial mistake of the 
old interpretation lies in its co-ordinating this judgment 
of the dead with that of the living, described in Matt 



The Judgment of the Great White Throne. 1G1 

xxv. It is therefore viewed as a judgment of the resur- 
rected masses of mankind, good and bad, for their con- 
duct in this present life. 

But to this view there a^e these fatal objections : 

1. The righteous are seen as already exalted to 
thrones. They are already safe within " the camp of the 
saints " and " the beloved city " (vs. 9). The saved of 
this dispensation cannot therefore be of the class who 
are here judged, nor must any book needs be opened in 
order to determine their title to eternal life. They al- 
ready have it. This " book of life " cannot therefore be 
identical with the " Lamb's book of life " (chaps, xiii. 8, 
xxi. 27). It must be another book, pertaining to a new 
economy under which the unrighteous dead are raised 
and put under new responsibilities, such as a new gift of 
life would bring to them. 

2. With regard to the results of this present trial in 
life, this class of men are already judged (John iii. 18, 36) 
and under the abiding wrath of God. They cannot 
attain to righteousness under the law, and most of them 
have never had any probation under the gospel. They 
are all therefore "guilty before God" (Rom. iii. 19). 
And not only judgment, but the death sentence has been 
passed upon them all (vs. 12). 

3. This sentence has been actually visited upon them. 
" The wages of sin is death." These men had died. Sin 
had killed them in body and soul. They were already 
captives in the prison of " death and hell." 

4. Their trial and sentence therefore are not set for a 
distant judgment day. We have already seen in our 
examination of Matt. xxv. 31-46, that Jesus Christ is 

11 



162 The Fire of GocPs Anger. 

now the Judge of quick and dead, and that the sorting 
between sheep and goats and the consignment to eternal 
fire are now going on. Man's judgment for the sins of 
this life is before resurrection. We believe it to be 
essential to all right conceptions of God's dealings with 
mankind on account of sin, that we should regard the 
wicked dead, as not awaiting the awards of a remote day 
of judgment, but as already judged and suffering the 
just consequences of their sins. Was not the rich man 
in hell-already doomed ? Have not Sodom and Gomor- 
rah already suffered the vengeance of eternal fire (Jude 
7) ? What else than a present judgment and a swift sen- 
tence was that by which Korah and his company went 
down alive into Sheol (Num. xvi. 30) ? The Apocalypse 
does indeed once refer to a time of the dead when they 
should be judged (xi. 18); but the context shows that 
what is referred to is the time for vindicating God's 
saints who had died in faith, awaiting their reward. 

The one fatal objection therefore to the current view 
of this passage is, that it makes this trial-scene to be the 
raising of an issue which was settled long before, the re- 
enactment of a sentence already passed and of a penalty 
already inflicted. The wicked dead have been already 
judged and turned into hell. 

II. What then is the character and purpose of 
this judgment of the resurrected dead ? Our study 
of John v. 29 has already indicated the answer. 
The object in the resurrection of the unjust is to put 
them again under the trial and discipline which pertain 
to embodied life. This passage sets before us this fact 
and furnishes a vivid picture of the final results of this 



The judgment of the Great White Throne. 163 

trial. In conformity with the teaching of all Scripture, 
we are obliged to view this judgment as a prolonged 
judicial administration. In favor of this view, we have 
I. The analogy of the passage from Daniel vii. upon 
which the vision is based. There we have also the 
placing of a throne of glory. We have the same 
formal opening of what appears to be a great as- 
size. "The judgment was set and the books 
were opened " (vs. 10). And yet what follows in 
the vision is evidently a continuous administration, dur- 
ing which all powers hostile to the dominion of the Son 
of Man are destroyed, and all peoples, nations and lan- 
guages brought into subjection to His sceptre. So this 
summoning of the dead before the great white throne is 
to be regarded as a condensed picture of a long admin- 
istration, during which the earth, the sea, and the whole 
empire of death and Hades give up their dead, who are 
thus brought under the judicial sway of the Son of Man. 
2. Other passages, especially where resurrection is 
referred to, condense into " an hour," and present upon 
one plane of vision such long continued processes. 
" Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour cometh and 
now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of 
God; and they that hear shall live" (John v. 25). If 
this refer to spiritual quickening, as is commonly sup- 
posed, the " hour " referred to lasts through the whole 
of this dispensation. So the hour of verse 28, during 
"which " all that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and 
come forth," must be the whole period of His conquests in 
the realms of death for the liberation of all its captives, until 
the last enemy is himself destroyed. Such progressive 



164 The Fire of Gocfs Anger. 

stages of triumph and deliverance are plainly indicated 
in i Cor. xv. 22-27. " For as in Adam all die, so also 
in the Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his 
own order : Christ the first-fruits ; then they that are 
Christ's, at his coming. Then the end, or the fulfilment 
(to t&o<t), when He shall deliver up the kingdom to God ; 
even the Father; when He shall have abolished all rule 
and authority and power. For He must reign until He 
hath put all His enemies under His feet. The last 
enemy that shall be abolished is death." All the Old 
Testament references to the Messiah's reign, as well as 
those in the New, in which the fact is plainly brought 
out that this reign is to be in the power of His resurrec- 
tion and to embrace the generations of the dead, preclude 
the idea of a brief assize, and require such a long period 
of rule and judgment as we have supposed. We have 
therefore not only a warrant, we are imperatively obliged 
to bring this obscure passage into harmony with this 
fundamental fact of Scripture. And in doing so, we 
violate no principle of interpretation, but only follow the 
analogies of all the passages which set forth these great 
events and issues of the future. Each and all of them, 
whether they relate to the Messiahs reign and judgment, 
to the resurrection of the dead, or to the renewal of the 
heavens and earth, are thus comprehensive and far- 
reaching. 

In conformity then with this principle, our exegesis 
of this passage would run somewhat thus : 

And I saw a great white throne and Him that sat up07i it. 
This expression indicates the perfect purity of that throne 
from which the Christ shall judge the world in righteous- 



The Judgment of the Great White Throne. 165 

ness. — From whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; 
and there was found no place for them. Many interpreters 
regard the phrase, " heaven and earth," in this and 
parallel passages, as denoting governmental systems. 
That all these must pass away before the coming of the 
perfect system is most true. But there is no warrant 
for refusing to regard this feature of the vision as pre- 
dictive of those great cosmical changes often referred to 
in Scripture as included within the scope of God's 
redemptive plan. The whole creation is to be delivered 
from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the 
glory of the children of God; No redemption of the 
human race can be complete which does not include the 
physical system to which it belongs, and of which it is 
the appointed heir (Gen. i. 26-28, Ps. viii). Hence, both 
Old and New Testament prophecy (Ish. lxv. 17-25, 2 
Peter iii.) contain most distinct and emphatic promises 
of such palingenesis, and the Apocalypse ends with a 
glowing and lovely picture of it. This period of change 
is a parturition period, and hence this general resurrec- 
tion of the dead is connected with and forms a part of 
it. And this itself confirms what has been already said 
of its protracted character. St. Peter assures us that we 
are not to measure these great steps in God's working 
by human standards. " One day is with the Lord as a 
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." 

And I saw the dead, the great and the small \ standing 
before the throne. . . . And the sea gave up the dead 
which were in it; and death and Hades gave up the dead 
which were in them. 

As the seer beholds in one picture the progressive 



166 The Fire of God's Anger. 

transformation of the " earth and the heaven," so the 
successive triumphs over the empire of death are viewed 
as one great conquest. All the dead, great and small, 
from earth and sea, and the depths of hell, are recovered 
out of the grasp of death. But, as we have seen, all 
analogies of prophecy, and especially as such vast and 
distant changes are brought within its scope, forbid us 
to regard the resurrection of these cbuntless dead as 
simultaneous. It must proceed in ever widening circles, 
gathering in wider and wider harvests, according to the 
law, u each in his own order." Such progress indeed is 
indicated in the vision, which has its climax in the cast- 
ing of death and Hades into the lake of fire. It thus 
corresponds with the progress denoted by St. Paul in 
I Cor. xv., where the advancing power of Christ's resur- 
rection issues in the subjection of all things under His 
feet. 

And books were opened: and another book was opened, 
which is * of life : and the dead were judged out of the 
things written in the books, according to their works. 

This feature of the vision is repeated from that of Daniel. 
The judgment there depicted is national rather than 
personal. The world power had gone through its course 
of evil, and now it must come to its proper issue. It 
must be destroyed, and the dominion of the world be 
transferred to the saints. The opening of the books, 
therefore, is the solemn assertion of God's great law of 
harvest. Nations, men, must reap as they sow. We 
know that this law must govern the resurrection harvest. 



* The words " the book " do not occur here in the original. 



The judgment of the Great White Throne. 107 

And it is this to which St. John's vision relates. The 
"books " are the sign to us that, by God's laws of life, 
character is wrought into embodiment. The body 
gathers up and perpetuates the fruits of previous con- 
duct. Hence, the law of resurrection is, " To every seed 
his own body." " For we must all be made manifest 
before the judgment seat of Christ ; that each one may 
receive the things through the body, according to the 
things he did" (2 Cor. v. 10, Greek). 

Saint and sinner are alike subject to this law. Char- 
acter, in this world, is being wrought into every fibre of 
the body. And on the wondrously woven and folded 
leaves of its organism are written out the results of con- 
duct and of life. The body is a record of the past, and a 
volume in which are. daily written God's judgments. 
The resurrection opens out a new volume in man's life, 
but the results and recorded judgments of the past are 
transcribed in it. Hence, in the resurrection, the secrets 
of all hearts and lives will be made manifest in the form, 
the grade, the potencies of the recovered manhood. 
The Judge will not need to refer to a book as an aid to 
His recollection. "All things are naked and manifest 
before Him." Nor will men need to search any other 
records, in order to approve His judgments, than those 
which are wrought into the fabric of their lives, and 
determine the character of their embodiment. 

But the question arises, Are these results final and 
irreversible ? Is there no room for change, for deterio- 
ration or improvement, in this life to come ? Is the new 
life conferred, to the unjust, an unmitigated curse? To 
show that it cannot be, we have only to rise from that 



168 The Fire of God's Anger. 

low conception of the Messiah's work of judgment, which 
views it as only vindicatory and punitive, to the large 
Scriptural conception of it already noticed. God's great 
laws of life are fixed and irrevocable, as, for example, the 
law of heredity. According to this law, men are con- 
tinually being born into the world on low planes of life 
and with vicious tendencies. But, even in these cases, 
the gift of life is a blessing and carries with it possibili- 
ties of amendment and enrichment. There is a strong 
vis medicatrix inherent in all life, an unwearying power 
of recovery. And therefore the life conferred at the 
resurrection, although burdened with the evil heritage of 
the former life, must be, to those who were held captive 
by death, a boon, and must bring with it possibilities of 
good. The law, " according to the fruit of the doings," 
must follow such a life all through its career. But, in 
God's great economy, the tendency of even this law is 
to work for the betterment of its subjects. And so the 
Messiah's reign of judgment must tend toward the good 
of even those whom He judges. It is a corrective 
administration. The Scriptures constantly speak of it 
in this character. We have seen that we must learn to 
view the § great events depicted in this passage as the 
graphic strokes in a picture whose outlines are large and 
deep. Instead of a mere assize, we must conceive of a 
long judicial reign, during which the dead are awarded 
such kind and character of life as becomes to them a 
process of judgment and correction. And during it 
another book of life is opened, in which the names of 
those are recorded who pass successfully through this 
new trial of life and gain its crown. 



The Judgment of the Great White Throne. 169 

And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. 
This is the second death, even the lake of fire. This period 
of Christ's reign ends with this final victory. The king- 
dom of the dead, having yielded up all its pris- 
oners, is itself destroyed. The lake of fire swallows up 
all enemies. All things are made new. The renovation 
embraces, and forever unites in blessed concord, the 
heaven and earth. The lake of fire is called the second 
death, because it becomes the grave of those who had 
been raised out of a first death, and are found unworthy, 
and because it rids the cosmos forever of the reign of 
this fell destroyer. 

And if any was not found written in the book of life y he 
was cast into the lake of fire. 

We have already found that the term " eternal fire " 
denotes that devouring energy of nature by which all 
defective and sinful forms of embodied life are consumed. 
The term " lake of fire " seems to define the final form of 
this energetic action, by which all things that offend, and 
all evil doers, are finally destroyed out of this created 
system. Its age-long enemies, the devil and his angels, 
and the great depositories of their trophies, death and 
hell, are all alike cast into this furnace of fire and de- 
stroyed. Everything and everyone that clings to the 
empire of evil perishes with it. This grand result is 
entirely inconsistent with the idea of the perpetual exist- 
ence of these enemies in endless agony in some hell of 
fire. Hell, in any such aspect of it, is itself doomed to 
destruction. And, therefore, all who are consigned to it 
perish witli it. The idea that God will preserve in a 
deathless existence of misery those who fail to enter into 



170 The Fire of God's Anger. 

life is irreconcilable with His character and purposes, 
and is utterly at war with all that is told us concerning 
His crowning gift of eternal life. There can be no im- 
mortal life in sin, for sin is essentially the destroyer of 
life. Any organism in which it is embodied contains 
the seeds of its own destruction. Hence, at the final 
summing up, " if any was not found written in the book 
of life, he was cast into the lake of fire. ,, 

And yet we must not make the mistake of confounding 
this final summing up with the sorting of mankind into 
sheep and goats now going on (Matt, xxv), nor suppose 
that there is no interval between the " resurrection of 
judgment" (John v. 29), and the final judgment here 
described. Between the setting up of the great white 
throne, and the lake of fire, there must be a long interval 
of times of resurrection, which are times of renewed 
trial in life, involving the opening of another book of 
life, suited to this new age of trial. If any fail of the 
crown of life under thj favorable circumstances under 
which this new opportunity of life is conferred, they 
must suffer the second death. Their failure seems to be 
final and irreversible. 

It will be thus seen that our interpretation of the judg- 
ment of the great white throne differs from that com- 
monly received in these two particulars. 

I. While the passage brings prominently before us 
the results of the great judgment process it describes, we 
must still view this process as prolonged through the 
age, or perhaps ages, to come, during which the Christ 
is subduing all His enemies and ridding the creation, 
of which He is the Heir, of all those invisible enemies 



The Judgment of the Great White Throne. 171 

who have converted its fair fields into the camp of death. 
This involves the liberation of the myriads of death's 
captives, who " stand up " again in life before His throne. 
2. This new gift of life, while it is conferred according 
to previous character, brings with it a new trial before its 
results are finally determined. If this idea is not found 
on the surface of the record here, it is required by all 
that Scripture teaches concerning the character of the 
Messiah's administration, and also by its teaching about 
death as the wages of sin, and of the redemptive char- 
acter of resurrection. To make room for these important 
features in this passage, it is only necessary to Ldmit the 
obvious principle that it does not describe sudden and 
simultaneous events, but sharply defines the outlines and 
results of great and prolonged administrations. From 
this point of view there is no difficulty in harmonizing it 
with what we have found to be the current teaching of 
all Scripture with regard to resurrection, that it is a 
" hope," and that even the raising up out of death and 
hell of the unjust dead belongs to the economy of re- 
demption. This feature of the divine plan is so inwrought 
into the texture of Scripture promises and hopes, it is so 
consistent with the character of God, and with all we 
have learned of His plan of creation, and its progressive 
development of life, that we are obliged to regard it as 
true and incontrovertible, however we may find it hard 
to adjust to such an obscure passage of Scripture as the 
one we have been studying. If any are disposed to 
regard our effort to reconcile it to this passage as a 
failure, we beg such not to reject the principle itself. It 
is too well established in Scripture to be dislodged by 



172 The Fire of God's Anger. 

any single passage, and especially one so obscure as 
this. Still less must any man's failure to reconcile it be 
accepted as evidence against it. When this whole book 
is better understood, some way of explaining this passage 
will be found which will neither impair its testimony, 
nor dim in the least the lustre of that great principle 
which has been our morning star through the twilight of 
all Old Testament prophecy. Once admitthatthe factthat 
the Christ has been ordained of God to be the Judge of 
all men, living and dead, is a part of His gospel, that the 
dead are to be brought under His judicial dealing through 
their resurrection, that this universal resurrection is in 
the line of His promised redemption which, to this 
extent at least, is a blessing in store for all the families 
of the earth, and even such hard passages as this will 
not militate against it, nor quench the light which this 
great principle throws upon all the dark places in God's 
Word, and all the dark features of His world-long deal- 
ing with the children of men. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



RETRIBUTION IN APOSTOLIC PREACHING. 

Our studies of the words of Jesus concerning future 
punishment, judgment, and resurrection, have convinced 
us that the destruction awaiting the sinner is an imminent 
peril, that hell, for him, lies this side of resurrection, that 
judgment has been passed upon him and sentence already 
pronounced, and that his future resurrection is not for 
these purposes, and for increase of retribution, but in 
the line of God's redemptive working, even where it per- 
petuates trial and judgment. We have also seen that 
that passage in Rev. xx, which depicts the judgment 
of the great white throne, and which, more than any 
other in Scripture, seems to militate against this view, 
may yet be harmonized with it — indeed must be so 
reconciled, unless we are to deny the manifold promises 
of blessing to all the generations of mankind through 
the Christ in whom all are to be made alive. All 
that is needed is that we interpret the vision as a pro- 
phetic picture, on one plane of canvas, of prolonged 
processes of resurrection, and of judgment, and of 
palingenesis, with special prominence given to the fact 
that all things belonging to the old creation, and all 
men, who do not yield to the transforming power of 
the Christ, must perish with the old order before the 
coming of the new heaven and earth wherein dwellethf 
righteousness. But as this penalty of " the lake of 
fire" is visited upon men who have been raised out 
of death to another life, it must be a punishment due 

173 



17 J: Ike Fire of GocPs Anger. 

for the sin of that life, and because of failure to re- 
spond to the gracious influences by which it was sur- 
rounded. The penalty for the sins of this life had 
already been executed, inasmuch as these men had 
already suffered death and had been consigned to hell, 
out of which they were now restored to life. 

It will be perceived then that our doctrine differs 
from the old church-doctrine, in that it makes room 
for other operations in an age to come of the grace 
and power of God, such as are required by the fact 
that He has provided for all men another gift of life 
through the Second Man, in lieu of that which they 
lost in the First. This involves the denial of the view 
that, before all the masses of mankind who, through 
successive generations, have died in their sins, there 
is in reserve nothing but an unending hell of misery, 
and that not even resurrection can bring to them a 
single ray of hope. 

Our purpose is next to inquire into the doctrine of 
retribution as it lies in the sermons and letters of the 
apostles. How did these inspired servants of Jesus 
interpret His words concerning the wrath to come? 
And how did they urge them upon the attention of 
their hearers ? 

We have recorded in the Acts the text, or the synop- 
sis, of some fifteen addresses, made, with one excep- 
tion, by St. Peter and St. Paul, who were the special 
bearers of the gospel message to the two classes of 
mankind, the Jews and the Gentiles. Most of these 
make some reference to a future punishment. The 
report of Peter's Pentecostal sermon ends thus: "And 



Retribution in Apostolic Preaching. 175 

with many other words he testified and exhorted them, 
saying, " Save yourselves from this crooked generation " 
(Acts ii. 40). After the healing of the lame man he 
again solemnly told the people that, in crucifying Jesus, 
they had rejected the Christ, and killed the Prince of 
Life, whom God had now raised and glorified. But 
that still pardon and blessedness under His reign, and 
the fulfilment of all the covenant blessings pledged to 
Abraham, were held out to them upon their repent- 
ance and confession of the Name of Jesus. But every 
soul which should not hearken unto that prophet 
should be utterly destroyed from among the people 
(iii. 23). The national hopes involved the hope of 
resurrection ; and so, as the priests and Sadducees were 
drawn around the speaker, " being sore troubled because 
they taught the people, and proclaimed in Jesus the 
resurrection from the dead," Peter testifies again to the 
Messiahship of Jesus, and re-affirms His resurrection, 
and declares, " Neither is there any other name under 
heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must 
be saved " (iv. 12). Stephen boldly charges home upon 
the people their long accumulated guilt. " Ye stiff- 
necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do 
always resist the Holy Ghost ; as your fathers did, so 
do ye. Which of the prophets did not your fathers 
persecute ? and they killed them which shewed before 
of the coming of the Righteous One: of whom ye 
have now become betrayers and murderers ; ye who 
received the law as it was ordained by angels, and 
kept it not" (vii. 51-33). Although he cuts them to 
the heart by his sharp speech, he does not speak defin- 



176 The Fire of Go<Ts Anger. 

itely of the punishment awaiting them. But, as they 
stoned him, " he kneeled down, and cried with a loud 
voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Later, 
we find Peter rebuking Simon Magus as follows, "Thy 
money perish with thee, because thou hast thought to 
obtain the gift of God with money. Thou hast neither 
part nor lot in this matter; for thy heart is not right 
before God" (ix. 20, 21). In the house of Cornelius we 
find him testifying to the Risen Jesus as the ordained 
Judge of all men, living and dead (x. 42). 

In the 13th chapter, St. Paul comes to the front as 
the chosen witness to the Gentiles. At Paphos, he 
denounces Elymas the sorcerer as one " full of all 
guile and all villiany, a son of the devil and an enemy 
of all righteousness, perverting the right ways of the 
Lord" (vs. 10). And the hand of the Lord smote him 
with blindness for a season. At Antioch he warns the 
people of their danger in rejecting the Christ, in these 
words, " Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish; 
for I work a work in your days, a work which ye 
shall in no wise believe, if one declare it unto you " 
(vs. 41). To the rude Lycaonians at Lystra, who 
imagined him to be a god, he seems to have uttered 
no such threats, but to have urged them to forsake 
their idols and to turn to the living God who made 
all things, and filled their hearts with food and glad- 
ness (xiv. 15-17). At Athens he closes his address 
with the warning that God, who had overlooked the 
times of ignorance in the past, now commanded all 
men to repent, " inasmuch as He hath appointed a day, 
in the which He is about to judge the world in right- 



Retribution in Apostolic Preaching. 177 

eousness, by the man whom He hath ordained ; whereof 
He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath 
raised Him from the dead" (xvii. 31). In the 24th 
chapter, before Felix, he sums up the hope of the 
gospel he had been preaching, as a " hope toward God 
that there shall be a resurrection both of the just and 
the unjust" (vs. 15.) Before Felix, he reasoned of 
righteousness, and temperance, and impending (fieXAovrog) 
judgment, until his royal hearer trembled. This apos- 
tle's preaching always assumes that men by nature are 
in darkness, and under the power of Satan, that they 
need remission of sins, and salvation both from sin 
and from its doom (xvi. 30, xxvi. 18, 19). And the 
accounts of it close with his solemn testimony to a 
representative company of his own countrymen at Rome 
that the Jews were blinded to the grace and glory of 
this salvation of God, and that henceforth it should be 
sent unto the Gentiles (xxviii. 23-28). 

We have thus cited, or referred to, all the passages 
in these specimens of apostolic preaching which refer 
to future punishment. The question we desire to ask 
from them is: Do they fairly set before men the danger 
of an everlasting punishment in hell ? 

In order to a fair reply we have to observe, first, 
An entire absence from these addresses of such state- 
ments and appeals as we might justly look for in view 
of such a danger. It is only in the way of remote 
inference that this doctrine could be gathered from any- 
thing contained in these first typical sermons. The 
strongest phrases are those of Peter, where, quoting 
from Moses, He warns the Jews that the rejecters of 
12 



178 The Fire of God's Anger. 

the Great Prophet would be utterly destroyed from 
among the people; and of Paul, at Antioch, who quotes 
from the prophets a warning to despisers that they shall 
perish. Neither of these threatenings, as first uttered 
by Moses or Isaiah, carried with them the idea of 
eternal torment in hell. And, it is altogether gratui- 
tous to suppose that the Jews, or the proselytes, or 
the Gentiles, who made up the audience at Jerusalem 
and at Antioch, would attach any such meaning to 
them. Granting that a portion of the Jews of that day 
did believe in the eternal conscious existence in misery 
of some wicked men, they did not believe such a des- 
tiny to be possible for Jews. Moreover, some of them 
believed that the worst sinners would be annihilated. 
And the words of the apostles are much more conso- 
nant with that view. But, the point we make is that 
it is irrational to suppose that, if the apostles put that 
meaning upon the words of Jesus about the eternal fire 
which we have attached to them, they would have 
been so reticent concerning this inconceivable peril. If 
all their hearers were in danger of dropping into this 
eternal hell, there to be tormented, first in soul, and 
after resurrection, "with unspeakable torments of body 
and soul in hell-fire, with the devil and his angels for- 
ever," can it be possible that they would not have 
spoken more plainly of this awful doom. Where else 
should we expect the plainest utterances on this tre- 
mendous theme, if not in these first inspired proclam- 
ations ? The attempt has lately been made by Prof. 
Austin Phelps, of Andover, to show that the silences 
of the apostles, as to this matter, prove that the es- 



Retribution in Apostolic Preaching, 179 

chatological teaching of Jesus had already been dif- 
fused and accepted, that it was a thing " fixed and 
familiar in the beliefs " of men. This is a most un- 
warranted assumption. But, granting its truth, can we 
suppose that a feature of such immense importance 
should be so uniformly left out of these appeals by 
which the apostles urged men to take refuge in Jesus 
Christ and be saved ? Familiar beliefs are those upon 
which we most rely in urging men to duty. Or, 
granting that their Jewish hearers needed less to have 
this infinite danger held up before them, how can we 
account for it that the address to the rude Lycaonians 
at Lystra contains nothing of it, and that, while Paul 
spcke to the cultured sceptics of Athens of Him who 
was appointed to judge the world in righteousness, 
there is no record of his warning them that, by the 
sentence of this divine Judge, they would be cast into 
the hopeless agonies of an endless hell ? Neither in 
his words, nor in the sneering criticisms made upon 
his address, is there any evidence that he alluded to 
this appalling issue. These Gentiles had not been 
familiar with the teachings of Jesus upon this point. 
And the most fearful conceptions of their pagan 
mythologies were infinitely below the horror of this 
awful fate. And even these were made a mock and 
jest of among the loungers in the Academic groves of 
Athens. No other view is reasonable than this, that 
the first preachers of Christianity did not put the mean- 
ing upon the words of Jesus to which we have long 
been accustomed. They did not believe that before 
all mankind, except the little handful of Christian 



180 The Fire of Gcds Anger. 

disciples, there was one long night of hopeless, 
endless, despair. They doubtless believed that 
there was a great danger before sinful men, a fearful 
looking for of judgment, a possible loss of soul and 
body in hell, a failure to enter into life, and a resur- 
rection of judgment. But even such apprehensions of 
wrath to come were balanced and tempered by their 
belief that a light of hope had arisen for all the world 
when Jesus arose, that, in the grand sweep of His 
triumph, all the promises of blessing to Israel and to 
mankind, spoken by the mouth of holy prophets since 
the world began, would be made good, that His ascen- 
sion was the beginning of "times of restitution " whose 
widening circles should embrace " all things" (iii. 19- 
21), and that, therefore, the "hope toward God" cov- 
ered even the "resurrection of the unjust" (xxiv. 15). 
No worse fate for incorrigible sinners can be ex- 
tracted from their words than their final and utter 
destruction. But even this must be such a destruction 
as consists with their future resurrection from the dead. 
What lies before them beyond that they do not reveal. 
Only a glimpse is here and there given of hope beyond. 
It is only in the epistles, written afterwards to their 
converts, that they disclose more of the unsearchable 
riches of Christ. So that, while we are not warranted 
in deriving a doctrine of universal salvation from these 
first models of gospel preaching, we are certainly for- 
bidden by them from holding up before men the ter- 
rors of an everlasting fire of hell. We are instructed 
by them in more merciful views of God, and in wider 
views of the scope of His salvation. But while these 



Retribution in Apostolic Preaching. 181 

sermons do not fit in to the long-accepted theory of 
future punishment, they certainly do warn men that 
they stand in present need of salvation from sin and 
death and hell, that this salvation is in no other name 
than the Name of Jesus, and that, whatever possibili- 
ties may be involved in God's gracious provision to 
recover the human race out of the pit of death into 
which sin has cast it, there is now an imminent 
destruction out of life and manhood, and away from 
the light and bliss of God's presence, awaiting every 
sinful man who refuses to believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ and be saved. 

There is one other consideration necessary to a proper 
understanding of these first presentations of the gospel. 
The apostles seem at first to have contemplated the 
possibility of the wide-spread conversion of mankind 
to Christ. St. Peter, after Pentecost, speaks to his fel- 
low-countrymen, as if the whole nation might now sub- 
mit to the risen Jesus, and so inaugurate His world- 
wide triumph (iii. 12-26). But the martyrdom of Stephen 
soon dispelled this anticipation, and the way was pre- 
pared for gathering a new spiritual seed of Abraham 
from among the Gentiles. Peter received Cornelius 
and his kinsmen and friends, as the first fruits of this 
harvest. But it was reserved for Paul to pronounce 
the definite turning away of God's electing grace from 
the Jews, who judged themselves unworthy of eternal 
life, to the Gentiles (xiii. 44-48). And to him it was 
gradually revealed that it was not God's purpose now to 
convert all these nations, but to gather from among them 
a chosen seed. At Antioch, only "as many as were 



1S2 The Fire of God's Anger. 

ordained to eternal life believed" (vs. 48). The Lord 
encouraged him to remain a long time at Corinth, for 
He had much people in that city (xviii. 10). But he 
was forbidden of the Holy Ghost to go to other places 
he was intending to visit (xvi. 6-8). In such ways 
God was teaching him that the object of his mission 
was not to accomplish the conversion of all men indis- 
criminately wherever he might go, but to be His in- 
strument in gathering out from these nations that chosen 
company who were to be God's instruments of wider 
blessing to all mankind in the future administrations 
of His kingdom. But it is only in the way of sug- 
gestion that we have in the Acts an occasional glimpse 
of this feature of the divine purpose. It is reserved 
for the epistles to plainly reveal it. But we see, in 
these few glimpses, another reason than that already 
given, why the apostles' preaching did not have about 
it that character we might have expected, if we must 
regard them as sent out on a mission to all their 
fellow-men of salvation from the doom of an endless 
hell, and to present to them a test by which their 
destiny should be everlastingly fixed. The fact that 
their preaching did not have that character is a proof 
that it was not designed to present this test, and that 
this is not the issue which is imbedded in the truth 
as it is in Jesus. 



CHAPTER IX. 



RETRIBUTION IN ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. 

We have now remarked upon the significant absence 
from the first sermons of the apostles of the doctrine 
of an eternal hell of tormenting fire. When we pass to 
the study of the epistles we find the same lack of evidence 
that the apostles put that construction upon the words 
of Jesus concerning future punishment which the church 
in later ages has fastened upon them. No one of the 
passages which refer to the doom of the wicked will 
bear the weight of this tremendous doctrine. The 
church would never have thought of putting this mean- 
ing upon them, had not her pre-conceived interpreta- 
tion of the words of Jesus required it. 

Our present contention is, that the silences of the 
apostolic sermons and letters upon a matter of such 
enormous interest can be explained in no other way 
than by the fact that these inspired men did not con- 
ceive of it as it has since been defined in the church 
confessions. It may be said that we have no right to 
look for definite statements of this doctrine in epistles 
addressed to believers. But this objection does not bear 
upon the fact that such statements are not found ~in 
their addresses to unbelievers. The epistles, however, 
do contain many allusions to the destiny of wicked 
men. How is it possible, if the apostles believed that 
the vast majority of their fellow-men were standing on 
the brink of such bottomless despair, they would not 
have given so plain a testimony in both sermons and 
epistles that he who runs might read ? 

183 



184 The Fire of God's Anger. 

Our examination will at first be confined to the epis- 
les of St. Paul. A large proportion of the New Tes- 
tament is taken up with these epistles. In them, more 
than in an}' other part of Scripture, the verities of 
Christianity are set forth in their logical relations, and 
as connected with God's great plan in the creation of 
the world and of man. Questions of human destiny 
are often discussed. It becomes therefore a matter of 
prime importance in the line of these studies, that we 
should inquire what these epistles have to say about 
retribution. We shall find : 

1. That while St. Paul continually conceives of the 
judgment of the world as a consummation of the future, 
he also views it as already begun and carried on under 
the administration of Christ. 

2. The words by which he describes the punishment 
awaiting wicked men always contain in some form the 
death-idea. 

3. This punishment is always conceived of as inflicted 
before, and not after, resurrection.. 

4. He never views the resurrection, even of the un- 
just, in any other light than that of a " hope.'' 

5. The salvation of the church in this dispensation 
is always viewed as that of a first-fruits or first-born 
company. 

6. There are frequent glimpses in his writings of 
wider reaches of God's saving grace toward the un- 
saved masses of mankind, to be unfolded in the ages 
to come, after the salvation of the church in this age 
has been completed. 

Taking up these points in order, we find that this 
apostle teaches : 



Retribution in St. Paul's Epistles. 185 

I. Concerning judgment, that Christ Jesus is now 
Lord of both the dead and the living (Rom. xiv. 9), 
and that He shall come to judge the living and the 
dead (2 Tim. iv. 1). The word /iiUec y however, in the 
latter passage, carries with it the idea not only of a 
future but of an impending judgment. It must have 
its consummation at " His appearing and kingdom." 
But while He speaks of a " day of wrath and revelation 
of the righteous judgment of God" (Rom. ii. 5), he 
also says that the wrath of God is now " revealed from 
heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness oi 
men" (i. 19). That the wrath and indignation, tribu- 
lation and anguish, which must come upon every soul 
of man that doeth evil (ii. 6-10), is not wholly a thing 
of the future, is proved by what he tells us of the 
Jews, as an example of the severity of God. They 
were already " cut off" (ch. xi). He says of them also 
(1 Thess. ii. 15, 16) that because they had killed the 
Lord Jesus and the prophets, and driven him out, for- 
bidding him to speak to the Gentiles that they might 
be saved, "wrath is come upon them to the uttermost." 
The same thing appears in his teaching concerning 
Christians as subjects of the divine judgment " We 
must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of 
Christ that everyone may receive the things in (or 
through) the body, according to the things he did, 
whether good or bad" (2 Cor. v. 5, Rom. xiv. 11). 
And yet all Christians are viewed as already held to 
a strict account before that bar. A notorious offender 
was delivered unto Satan by this apostle, acting in the 
name of the Lord Jesus, " for the destruction of the 
flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of the 



18G The Fire of God's Anger. 

Lord Jesus" (i Cor. v. 5). So also certain persons in 
that church had been judged and chastened of the 
Lord by sicknesses and death because of their unworthy 
behavior at the Lord's Supper (xi. 30-32). Such in- 
stances were proof that the Lord was now judging 
His people (Heb, x. 30), and that, in the chastisements 
that came upon them, they were being taught that 
" Our God is a consuming fire " (Heb. xii .*), and that 
it is a fearful thing for even the offending Christian to 
fall into His hands. In the view then of this great 
teacher, judgment for sin was as truly a fact of the 
present as of the future. The day of the Lord would 
be but the more open and intense manifestation of a 
wrath against sin which was even now burning, and 
which should devour the adversaries. 

2. As to the character of punishment awaiting evil- 
doers, it is always defined by St. Paul as a perishing 
or a destruction. The death-idea enters into every one 
of the terms employed. 

Referring to the ungodly heathen, he says of them 
that "knowing the judgment of God, that they which 
do such things are worthy of death" they still do the 
same (Rom. i. 32). u For as many as have sinned 
without law shall also petish without law " (ii. 12). In 
the sixth chapter the service of sin is said to issue in 
death (vs. 16). " What fruit then had ye at that time 
in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the 
end of those things is death" (vs. 21)- " For the wages 



*We shall quote from the Book of Hebrews in this examination, 
although many of our best modern scholars assign it to some other author 
than St. Paul. Its theology, at least, is Pauline, and we may therefore 
very well include it in an effort to study the doctrine of this apostle. 



Retribution in St. Pants Epistles. 187 

of sin is death" (23), This term includes present spir- 
itual death (vii. 9, 13, 24), but this spiritual state is 
called " death," because the end and issue of it is the 
"perishing" or destruction of those who are not saved 
from it. Hence, in the ninth chapter, he speaks of 
wicked men as " vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction '' 
(22). In 1 Cor. i. 18, he defines rejecters of the gos- 
pel as " them that are perishing!' The same phrase 
occurs again in 2 Cor. ii. 15. And that he means by 
this term something more than spiritual deadness is 
seen by his use of the same word in 1 Cor. x. 9, 10. 
" Neither let us tempt the Lord, as some of them 
tempted, and perished by the serpents. Neither murmur 
ye, as some of them murmured, and perished* by the 
destroyer." In 1 Cor. xv. 18, this word can mean noth- 
ing less than the complete loss of personal being. 
" Then they also which have fallen asleep in Christ are 
perished!' For that the apostle in this famous chapter 
makes all future existence for man turn upon the fact 
that Christ rose from the dead is plain from verse 32. 
"If after the manner of men I fought with beasts at 
Ephesus, what doth it profit me ? If the dead are not 
raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die " 
These quotations are quite sufficient to dispel the false 
coloring with which many surround the uniform Scrip- 
tural teaching as to the penalty of sin. We have found 
it throughout to be the destruction of man, as an em- 
bodied being, created in the image of God and made 
the heir of His works. It has been confidently assumed 
that spiritual death, alienation from the life of God, 

* In most of our quotations we follow the New Version, in which the 
same Greek word is more uniformly rendered by the same English word. 



188 The Fire of God's Anger. 

is the essence of this penalty, but that the life of man, 
thus severed from God, would continue forever in im- 
mortal woe. Spiritual death, no doubt, is an essential 
feature in man's penalty. But that it involves and must 
ultimately issue in the literal death of its victims is 
plain from these passages. Evidently, when St. Paul 
writes that if there were no redemption from this pen- 
alty through resurrection, even those who had died in 
Christ had perished, and that for us to live any longer 
in expectation of a life beyond is useless, "for to- 
morrow we die," he conceives of this death as extinc- 
tion of being. His whole teaching, indeed, implies 
that, beneath this working of sin unto death, God has 
wrought in the death and resurrection of Christ to give 
to believers an eternal life, and to provide that death 
should not make an end of even the unjust. But this 
does not alter the fact that his ultimate conception of 
the wages of sin for man is literal death. 

The same idea is involved in his frequent use of the * 
term " destruction " in such passages as Phil. iii. 19, 
" Whose end is destruction" " Then sudden destruction 
(oXedpov) cometh upon them " (1 Thess. v. 3). "Who 
shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from 
the face of the Lord and from the glory of His might, 
when He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and 
to be admired in all them that believe " (2 Thess. i. 9). 
This passage is by far the strongest in any of St. Paul's 
writings in its apparent support of the ordinary doc- 
trine of endless suffering in hell. The mention of it 
may serve therefore to lead us to examine it in con- 
nection with our next point, which is : 

3, This apostle always conceives of the punishment 



Retribution in St. Pants Epistles. 189 

of sin as inflicted upon the ungodly before resurrection. 
We would by no means assert that his words do not 
carry with them a reference to a remoter death for sin 
after a resurrection — the same which St. John defines 
as the second death. But primarily his words refer 
simply to that death which is due for the sins of this 
life, and which overtakes the sinner this side of his 
resurrection, and which we have seen to be more strictly 
defined in the words of Jesus as the loss of all that 
gives us present standing in life and inheritance in this 
system of God's works, including, beyond the death of 
the body, the destruction of the soul in hell. We have 
already seen how groundless is the assumption that 
the judgment scene in Matt. xxv. 31-46 relates prim- 
arily to the resurrected dead. Equally forced and un- 
warranted is it to assume that the ungodly despisers 
of the gospel, whom Paul here describes as visited at 
Christ's coming with an eternal destruction, are resur- 
rected men. The men who would be saying, " Peace 
and safety," when " sudden destruction cometh upon 
them" (1 Thess. v. 2), could be no other than men 
living on the earth. This was the class who were to 
be overtaken. And hence it is altogether gratuitious 
to suppose that any other class is referred to in 2 
Thess. i. 9 as to be eternally destroyed from his pres- 
ence. Whatever this punishment may be, it is inflicted 
uplon living men, arid not upon men resurrected to be 
damned. It is the death that precedes resurrection. 
With regard to the word " eternal " (aubvwv*} 
it might define this destruction as (1) endless. But in 

*This is the only instance in which St. Paul uses this word in con- 
nection with retribution. 



390 The Fire of GocCs Anger. 

this case we would be obliged to regard the death it 
brings with it as absolute and final. Or (2), giving to 
the word its strict etymological value, it may describe 
an age-long destruction, that is, one lasting until the 
resurrection. Or (3) if it be insisted that no less value 
th?n that of "-endless" pertains to the word, the de- 
struction, which is not defined as absolute, but as "from 
the face of the Lord," would be a banishment from 
His presence, and from a share in His glory, from 
which not ev^n resurrection would recover them. They 
could be restored only to those outer circles of life 
and blessing whi.ch are far removed from His central 
glory. While we incline to the second of these ex- 
planations, the third will be preferred by those who 
are unwilling to admit that aiwvtov can ever have a 
lower equivalent than "endless." But in either case 
we are obliged to regard the destruction as visited 
upon men alive upon the earth at Christ's coming, and 
as continuing through that long period which lasts up 
to their resurrection. And therefore the question is 
still open, What change will be wrought in their con- 
dition by that event? We have seen that the unright- 
eous of every class, in Paul's view, must be shut out 
from the kingdom of God (2 Cor. vi. 9, 10), that they 
cannot inherit that kingdom when the saints are invested 
with its glory. But would resurrection bring to such 
no recovery and no relief? Would it not bring them 
into some outer precinct of this kingdom ? If not 
heirs, might not some of this class be made subjects ? 
Now, that some such good must be made possible 
is involved in all Paul's teaching about the resurrec- 
tion of the dead. For 



Retribution in St. Paul's Epistles. 191 

4. He never views the resurrection of the unjust in 
any other light than that of a " hope." 

We have already seen, that, in all his sermons, the 
hope of resurrection is an essential feature of the gos- 
pel. There is not a word or an allusion which can 
possibly be construed as proof that he regarded 
resurrection as a terror to the countless masses of 
mankind who had died in their sins. On the contrary 
he thus distinctly speaks of it as a hope. " And have 
hope toward God, which they also themselves allow, 
that there shall be a resurrection both of the just and 
of the unjust" (Acts xxiv. 15). Nothing but special 
pleading, in the interest of a preconceived theory, can 
remove the resurrection of the unjust from the cate- 
gory of " hope " in this passage. Accordingly, we find, 
when we turn to the epistles, this apostle teaching 
that, as death came upon the whole world by reason 
of the sin of the first man, so this forfeited life has 
been redeemed for the whole race by the obedience 
of the second man (Rom. v. 12-20). " So then as 
through one trespass the judgment came unto all men 
to condemnation; even so through one act of righteous- 
ness the free gift came unto all men to justification of 
life." No view of this whole passage which limits the 
blessing of restored life to a select class of mankind 
can possibly do justice to the parallels which run 
through it, or can possibly be made to consist with 
what it teaches about the far more abundant grace 
shown in the recovery. We do not indeed regard the 
"justification to life" provided as the ransom of all to 
" eternal life." For that was not the life which Adam 
forfeited. He was created only a candidate for this 



192 The Fire of God's Anger. 

high dignity. Eternal life is of a new and higher 
order of life, and is the gift of God through Jesus 
Christ alone to as many as receive Him. But the 
passage plainly teaches that the life which Adam lost 
has been bought back for all. And Scripture knows 
of no other way by which it reaches all except through 
a resurrection from the dead. And, therefore, this must 
be to all a recovery and a boon. Life in manhood is 
an embodied life. Man is a creature holding a certain 
relation to the system of God's works, of which he was 
made the crown and heir. Death discrowns him and 
casts him out of his inheritance. Resurrection rehabili- 
tates him and gives him another opportunity in life. 
This may bring new perils and issue for some in a 
"second death." But, it must bring also new hopes 
and opportunities. And, hence, St. Paul includes the 
resurrection of even the unjust in his catagory of 
*' hope toward God." 

The same view of it is required by his teaching in 
I Cor. xv. 21-28. He tells us there also that " Since 
by man came death, by man also the resurrection of the 
dead." The one is co-extensive with the other. " For as 
in Adam all die, so in the Christ shall all be made alive." 
The " all " must be as inclusive in the one case as in the 
other. He teaches, however, that all do not come 
forth at the same time, or in the same order. Christ 
is the firstfruits. Then they that are of the Christ, 
the Christ-body, at His coming.* " Then (Ura y after 



* Other passages in bis writings show that he regarded the resur- 
rection as eclectic and progressive, notably Phil. iii. n, «« If by any means 
I may attain unto the resurrection out from among the dead." Et's ryv 

e£avd<TTa<TLV tt\v e/c riov veKpou>» 



Retribution in St. PauVs Epistles. 193 

that) cometh the end, when He shall deliver up the 
kingdom to God, even the Father ; when he shall have 
abolished all rule and all authority and power. For 
lie must reign, till He hath put all His enemies under 
His feet. The last enemy that shall be abolished is 
death." These words evidently refer to successive and 
advancing triumphs in the administration of Christ 
(with which His saints are to be associated), issuing in 
the recovery of all death's captives and the destruction 
of death itself. That this is a deliverance for all these 
captives is further shown by the inquiry raised in verse 
29. " Otherwise what shall they do which are baptized 
in behalf of* the dead ? If the dead are not wholly 
(olioi) raised, why then are they baptized for them? 
why do we also stand in jeopardy every hour ? " These 
questions hint, at least, at a truth which is frequently 
alluded to in Scripture, that the future recovery of 
all mankind from death is made to depend upon the 
salvation of a firstfruits company, f The apostle, as belong- 
ing to this priestly company, was now, with his breth- 
ren, enduring the trials which fitted them for this place 
of honor and of service* They were being baptized in 
behalf of the dead. Their sacrifices would be useless, 
if they were neither to attain unto the resurrection of 
the dead, nor be made participants in their Lord's ex- 
tending conquests over death which should issue in 
the recovery of all, and for which high service they 
were now now being baptized into Christ's death. He' 
thus views all his sufferings as his baptism in behalf 
of the dead, a surrender of himself to that which would 



*This is the meaning of the Greek inrip. f Appendix B 

13 



194 The Fire of GocTs Anger. 

issue in deliverance to them. And this brings us to 
our next point, which is : 

5. That St, Paul always views the salvation of the 
church as that of a first-fruits or first-born company. 
This explains what would otherwise be his hard 
sayings about election. Nothing is plainer than 
that he refers our salvation to the sovereign, absolute, 
eternal, choice of God (Ephes. i. 4, 5, 11, Acts xiii. 48, 
etc). The Pelagian and Arminian quibbles by which 
men have endeavored to set aside this blessed truth 
would never have been heard of, if it had been per- 
ceived that the purpose of this gracious election does 
not terminate upon the little flock who are its subjects. 
They are chosen as the channels of a grace that shall 
extend beyond them to others. They are the royal 
priesthood of a great salvation (1 Peter ii. 9). Hence 
the titles by which Paul designates this body of Christ 
are, " Brethren of the First Born " (Rom. viii. 29, Col. 
i. 18), "Church of the first-born " (Heb. xii. 23), the 
same as St. James designates as begotten by God of 
His own will to be a " kind of first-fruits of His crea- 
tures." They are those who have "first hoped in 
Christ " before the " redemption of the purchased pos- 
session " (Eph. i. 12, 14). All these terms imply that 
these special objects of God's favor are not the only 
ones embraced in His redemption. First-born implies 
that there are later born. First-fruits implies a sub- 
sequent harvest. And this leads us to remark: 

6. That there are frequent glimpses in Paul's writ- 
ings of wider reaches of God's grace toward the un- 
saved masses of mankind, to be unfolded after the sal- 
vation of the church has been completed. In Rom. xi 



Retribution in St. PauPs Epistles. 195 

he shows how the cutting off of the Jewish people had 
opened wide the door of God's grace to the Gentiles. 
But, " after the fullness of the Gentiles is brought in," 
that is, after the chosen company from among the Gen- 
tiles, necessary to make up the fulness** of Christ's 
body, be gathered in, then " all Israel shall be saved," 
and upon all those whom God had shut up unto dis- 
obedience His mercy should fall. The same thing is 
hinted at in chapter 15, where "the promises made to 
the fathers " are referred to. The germinal promise 
was that in a chosen seed all the families of the earth 
should be blessed. It is declared that Jesus Christ 
came to confirm these promises, and " that the Gen- 
tiles might glorify God for His mercy." That more 
than a moiety of these nations were to be reached by 
this mercy is proved by the apostle's quotations from 
the Song of Moses and from Ps. cxvii, in which all 
peoples and nations are called upon to praise God on 
account of it. In the Epistle to the Ephesians he 
declares that it is God's purpose in the dispensation 
of the fullness of times to gather together in one all 
things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which 
are on earth, even in Him (i. 10). He then unfolds 
the mystery of the Church, as the chosen companion 
and Bride of Christ, in the execution of this purpose. 
She is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in 
all, through whom the praise of the glory of His grace 
is to be displayed before angels and men (iii. 8-10). 
He speaks of " every family in heaven and earth " (vs. 
15, R. V.) as named from the common Father, and 



* Compare the use of the word n\rip<dna in Matt. ix. 16. 



196 The Fire of God's Anger. 

prays that He would strengthen these Ephesian breth- 
ren with all power by His Spirit in the inward man 
to take in the wide reaches of this love of Christ, 
whose breadth and length and height and depth were 
beyond all knowledge, and the glory of which should 
be displayed by the church unto all the generations 
of the ages. In Colossians i. 20 he speaks again of 
God's purpose to reconcile all things unto Himself in 
Christ, whether they be things in earth or things in 
heaven, and in Phil. ii. 10 declares that unto the name 
of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, 
earth, or under the earth, and every tongue confess 
that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father. 
Surely here are glimpses of a wider salvation than one 
which leaves the realms of death and hell filled with 
damned souls in eternal hate, rebellion and agony. It 
is only as we come to understand that His triumph 
must finally extend itself through all these regions, re- 
covering, each in his own order, these lost captives, and 
restoring at least life to all, through a resurrection from 
the dead, and such opportunities as recovered life must 
bring with it, that we can rightly understand the ex- 
pressions we meet with in the epistles to Timothy 
and Titus. We there find St. Paul instructing Timo- 
thy to see to it that the church, in her priestly capacity, 
offer up prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks for 
all men. " For this is good and acceptable in the sight 
of God our Saviour; who willeth that all men should 
be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. 
For there is one God, one mediator also, between God 
and men, himself man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself 
a ransom for all ; the testimony to be borne in its own 



Retribution in St. PauPs Epistles. 197 

times " (i Tim. ii. 1-6). So also he speaks of the 
living God, as the Saviour of all men, specially of them 
that believe (iv. io). To what can this refer, if not to 
the fact that while believers are made the subjects of 
a special salvation, all men have been ransomed to 
another life than that which all had lost in Adam, and 
that there was something in this ransom for which all 
should give thanks ? If too blind and ignorant to do 
this for themselves, the church, as standing for all men, 
should do it for them. To Titus also he writes that 
"the grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation 
to all men" (ii. n). But that this was not the salva- 
tion bestowed upon the church is made plain by the 
statement in verse 14, " Who gave Himself for us, that 
He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto 
Himself a people for His own possession, zealous of 
good works." These varied statements are harmonized 
only by the supposition that the redeeming work of 
Christ, in securing the salvation of the church, has 
secured also such a salvation of all men from the ruin 
wrought in them by sin and death, that all have a new 
standing in life before God. They cannot be reconciled 
with the view that no portion of the human race have 
yet obtained any interest in this salvation but the small 
proportion of regenerated believers, and that before all 
the rest there is no hope of relief from the agony of 
an endless hell. 

Even if, however, our readers should refuse to go 
with us in accepting these passages as positively sus- 
taining this larger hope, the negative argument with 
which we started out remains unchanged, and cannot 
be assailed. The uniform silence of St. Paul's epistles 



198 The Fire of GocFs Anger. 

upon this doctrine of an endless torment in hell proves 
that he did not hold the doctrine. It formed no part 
of the message he was inspired to deliver to men. It 
did not enter into the whole counsel of God which he 
shunned not to declare (Acts xx. 27). He was familiar, 
of course, with the words of Jesus from the letter of 
which this doctrine has been unwisely drawn. But it 
is impossible, if he had received these words in the 
sense put upon them in later times, that not a single 
passage in all his writings should give a clear testi- 
mony of this unspeakable peril. 

Before closing this examination it is proper that we 
should add a few words upon the testimony of the 
epistle to the Hebrews. It was very likely not writ- 
ten by St. Paul, but all its severe statements about "a 
fearful looking for of judgment and of fiery indignation 
which shall devour the adversaries " (x. 27), and that 
"it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living 
God" (31), are in entire harmony with St. Paul's views 
of retribution. These passages are commonly misunder- 
stood and mis-applied because most readers overlook 
the primary fact that the epistle is throughout addressed 
to Christians, and speaks throughout of the sore chas- 
tisements that await them if unfaithful. Even the pas- 
sage, " Our God is a consuming fire " (xii. 29), which, 
from its use of the term " our" and its whole connection 
is seen to relate to judgments that must come upon 
Christians, if disobedient, is constantly quoted as if it 
read, " God, out of Christ, is a consuming fire." 
Whereas it is God in Christ, a consuming fire to all 
the evils remaining in His own children, and who 



Retribution in St. Pauls Epistles. 109 

scourges every son whom He receives (xii. 6), who is 
here brought to view. The passage teaches precisely 
the doctrine of I Cor. v, where a gross offender is 
represented as handed over to Satan, as the agent of 
God's consuming fire, "for the destruction of the flesh 
that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord 
Jesus." The harshest statement of all in this epistle 
is, "Whose end is to be burned" (vi. 8). But this is 
used of unfaithful Christians, unworthy branches of the 
Vine (John xv. 6), and the harshest meaning they 
could bear is that such will be forever destroyed. But 
in the light of the case of the Corinthian fornicator, 
we may well doubt whether anything more is meant 
than such a burning as shall consume the whole evil 
structure of such a man's life, or such a fire as is re- 
ferred to in I Cor. iii. 13-15, which must search the whole 
fabric of such a Christian's life work, and burn it up, 
if it be not M gold, silver, precious stones," and out of 
which he can be saved only " so as by fire." There 
are many passages in these epistles about which we 
shall go astray unless we discriminate between the 
absolute and final salvation secured to all believers in 
Christ, and the relative salvation and reward for which, 
in their character of " branches " or " servants " they 
are still on trial before the judgment seat of Christ. 



CHAPTER X. 



RETRIBUTION IN THE CATHOLIC EPISTLES. 

Passing on to the Catholic Epistles we find the same 
doctrine of retribution with that contained in the epis- 
tles of St. Paul. It is only to meet the requirements 
of a preconceived theory, that any one would think 
of deriving from their references to future punishment 
the doctrine of an everlasting punishment in hell 
Indeed they all relate either to threatening judgments 
which must overtake the ungodly in this world, or 
to that destruction of being which begins with bodily 
death, and is consummated beyond it in the loss of 
the soul, and the consequent ejection of the spirit 
into the outer darkness. But in no case is it affirmed 
or implied that this punishment lies beyond the res- 
urrection. On the contrary it is something immediate 
and impending. The resurrection of the ungodly is 
not indeed distinctly taught. But there are sorne 
indirect allusions to it. And these imply that it must 
be even to them a deliverance. 

Taking up these epistles in the order in which we 
find them, we come first to that of St. James. This 
epistle assumes throughout — as do all the others — that 
there is a way of life and a way of death. The last 
verse declares that " he which converteth a sinner from 
the error of his way shall save a soul from death." 
This indeed is the one clear, emphatic, oft-repeated 
testimony of Scripture upon this whole subject — that 
"sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death" (i. 15). 

200 



Retribution in the Catholic Epistles. 201 

Human tradition asserts that man can never die. It 
makes death to mean eternal life in misery. Because, 
forsooth, the term " death M is often applied in Scrip- 
ture to that spiritual condition in which man is " alien- 
ated from the life of God," it is assumed that death 
never means death. But the reason why this spiritual 
state is so called is, that it inevitably leads to the destruc- 
tion of the being that is thus severed from God. If 
anything is plainly taught in Scripture, it is that there 
can be no eternal life for man apart from Him. Hence 
the sinner who dies in body, must also lose his soul. 
His whole being is thus dissolved, and all that gave 
him life and heritage in manhood is gone. Such 
a man is dead — -blotted out of existence as a man 
— but not yet wholly extinct. Personal identity must 
still be latent in the outcast spirit. Otherwise the 
same man could not be brought back through 
resurrection. But resurrected life, unless it become 
linked in with the life of God, cannot be eternal. 
And hence to those to whom it does not bring 
this highest good, a second death becomes pos- 
sible. And as no resurrection is promised out of this 
second death, we infer that it is total and final. This 
view of the penalty of sin preserves to the uniform 
teaching of Scripture that " the wages of sin is death, " 
its proper meaning. At the same time, it provides 
room for those Scriptures which assume the prolonged 
existence of the soul after the body dies, the subse- 
quent extension of the death-process to the soul, the 
re-habilitation of the outcast spirit through resurrec- 
tion in virtue of the redeeming work of Christ, before 



202 The Fire of God's Anger. 

the great issue of eternal life or death, as now raised 
by His gospel, is finally, and for all men, forever 
settled. 

The only other passage in this epistle which speaks 
of future retribution occurs in the fifth chapter; and 
it is perfectly consistent with this idea, that judgment 
for the sins of this life is visited in and after death 
and before resurrection. It begins with a strong philip- 
pic against rich men who had accumulated wealth by 
fraud and oppression of the poor, and warns them that 
they must reap as they had sown — that their treasures 
•would be speedily burned up in consuming judgments, 
whose fires would also enwrap their own flesh. But 
the reference evidently is to a judgment "at the 
door" (vs. 9). It would be altogether arbitrary and 
unnatural to refer the language here used to a dis- 
tant judgment day, and to torments to be inflicted 
upon these doomed men in body and soul after a 
remote resurrection from the dead. Wicked men do 
not have to wait until then to learn that " God is a 
consuming fire." 

St. Peter's first epistle has the same general charac- 
teristic. It assumes that there is a death to be shunned 
and a life to be gained. It warns unwary Christians 
against the adversary who " goeth about, like a roar- 
ing lion, seeking whom he may devour" (v. 8). It 
reminds them that judgment is approaching — yea, that 
it was already beginning at the house of God (v. 17). 
And if the righteous could only with difficulty survive 
its ordeal, " where shall the ungodly and the sinner 
appear ? " Here also the language does not comport 



Retribution in the Catholic Epistles. 203 

with the thought of a far- distant assize to which those 
tried should be introduced after resurrection, but of a 
near issue of life and death in which the righteous 
man would preserve his soul alive, while that of the 
ungodly must sink into the gloom of death and 
hell. But, as we have repeatedly seen, all this 
is inflicted before the light of another life shall 
break in upon this darkness. It involves the utter 
ruin and loss of this present gift of life. It is that 
bankruptcy of being and bondage in Sheol which 
precedes resurrection. 

And hence we find in this epistle a plain allusion 
to the fact that such deliverance is in store for "spirits 
in prison.'* It affirms that Christ, being put to death 
in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit, " went and 
preached unto the spirits in prison, which aforetime 
were disobedient, when the long suffering of God waited 
in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing" 
(iii. 18-20). We have not time and space to enter 
upon a full critical discussion of the various interpre- 
tations put upon this famous passage. Orthodox 
commentators have seen at a glance that its surface 
meaning is opposed to the current teaching of the 
church concerning the final destiny of all men as un- 
alterably fixed at death. And, therefore, ingenuity 
has been exhausted in efforts to force into the 
passage some other meaning than the obvious one. 
And yet the effort has so far failed that an increas- 
ing number of even this class of writers now accept 
the ancient and catholic view, which the words them- 
selves require. 



204 The Fire of God's Anger. 

This is what the passage states : 

1. That Christ, after His death and resurrection,* 
il went and preached." 

2. Those to whom the preaching was addressed were, 
at the time of it, " spirits in prison " of the men who, 
in a former age, had despised the warning message of 
Noah. 

We do not understand, however, that this was the 
same gospel offer as is made to men in this life. It 
is only on the arena of manhood that the gospel prize 
of eternal life and of joint-heirship with Christ can 
be won. These outcast spirits were no longer men. 
They must be raised from the dead before they 
could get back to man's estate, or be capable of 
reaching its high goal. But the proclamation by 
Christ to them of His resurrection was to them 
a gospel, because it gave hope of their own future 
resurrection. 

That this was a message to the dead is further proved 
by the subsequent allusion to it in the next chapter 
(vs. 6). " For unto this end were the good tidings 
preached even to the dead, that they might be judged 
according to men in the flesh, but live according to 



* We call attention here to a palpable mistake in the prevalent as- 
sumption that the preaching in question took place in the interval between 
His death and resurrection. The statement in the text is that it was in 
the Spirit by which He was quickened out of death that He went and 
preached. It must therefore have been after His resurrection. For this 
quickening is resurrection (Rom. i. 4, viii 11. Comp. Eph. ii. 5-6, Col. 
ii. 12, iii. 1). The Greek word for ''preached" here means ••heralded" 
QKripvgev). Thii makes it probable that the direct object of the preaching 
was to announce the fact of His resurrection. 



Retribution in the Catholic Epistles. 205 

God in the spirit."* That "the dead" here spoken of 
are not the merely spiritually dead, but those who had 
actually died, appears in the use of the term " dead " 
in the previous verse : " Who shall give account to Him 
that is ready to judge the quick and the dead." No 
one would apply any other meaning to the word 
"dead" in this title of the Christ than the ordinary 
one. And therefore the same word in the next verse 
in immediate connection must refer to this same class. 
It was captives in the realms of death to whom these 
good news came. However, then, interpreters may 
quibble in the effort to evade the plain meaning of 
these two passages, it is evident that they lie right 
athwart the dogma that the eternal destiny of all men 
is irrevocably fixed at death. There is at least a glad 
tidings of a coming resurrection through a Risen Re- 
deemer proclaimed to all the dead. That this resur- 
rection will issue in the final salvation to eternal life 
of all is not here affirmed. But that it is a boon, that 
it brings with it a recovery of lost spirits to that herit- 
age in life and manhood out of which they were cast, 
that this renewed life will bring new opportunities — 



*This expression ''judged according to men in the flesh," etc., sug- 
gests that wherever the glad tidings of Christ's resurrection are made known, 
whether to men in the flesh, or to spirits in prison, it is both a word of 
judgment and of l'fe. It puts all that pertains to the flesh, and all of 
evil that cleaves to the spirit, under the ban of judgment. And it brings 
life only to those who acquiesce in this judgment and accept it as their 
just .due, and who, out cf deserved death, look alone to the Risen Christ 
for life. From this point of view it is quite possible to believe that there 
is a probation for resurrection, which will indeed, finally reach every man, 
but only in his own time and order. For none are raised who do not first 
hear the voice of the Son of God (John v. 25-29). 



206 The Fire of God's Anger. 

even where it brings judgment also — under the admin- 
istration of the Risen Son of Man is implied in the 
fact that the tidings of it are " good news," and in the 
nature of the change itself. For what is resurrection 
but recovery out of that death-state which is sin's pen- 
alty ? And, inasmuch as it is the direct fruit of Christ's 
triumph over death, how can it be otherwise than a 
blessing, a gift of God's grace, who provided at the 
first fall of man that a Conquering Seed of the woman 
should bruise the head of his destroyer, and raise him 
up out of the pit of death ? 

Passing on to 2d Peter we find quite a different tone 
to the epistle. The right of this book to its place in 
the sacred canon was but slowly recognized. It is 
now however generally accepted as authentic scripture. 
And certainly it bears the marks of such. Although 
it abounds in severe denunciations of corrupters of the 
church and threatenings of coming wrath, these all fit 
in to their proper place as premonitions of what must 
speedily befall the ungodly. There is no hint of a hell 
reserved for them beyond the resurrection. On the 
other hand, " their sentence now of old lingereth not, 
and their destruction slumbereth not " (ii. 3). He cites 
the instances of the evil angels, long ago cast down 
to hell (tartarus) and confined in pits of darkness, the 
drowning of the old world, the burning up of Sodom 
and Gomorrah, which were then adjudged to overthrow, 
as examples of that swift and sure destruction which 
shall overtake these evil-doers. For them the black- 
ness of darkness hath been reserved* (vs. 17). In the 

*The word "forever'' is omitted in the R. V. • 



Retribution in the Catholic Epistles. 207 

next chapter he declares that, as the old world per- 
ished by water, so the heavens and earth that are now, 
have been " stored up for fire, being reserved against 
a day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men." 
But there is no warrant for locating any of the things 
here threatened beyond the resurrection. These judg- 
ments attend the Lord's second coming, and are visited 
upon men living on the earth, just as truly as was the 
flood, with which they are compared. And the perdi- 
tion and blackness of darkness which lie beyond these 
mortal strokes do not await the decision of a distant 
trial after a- resurrection. They are immediate. Noth- 
ing in this epistle affects the validity of the principle 
that out of all this pit of perdition resurrection is a 
recovery. 

But to all this it will be objected that the unrighteous 
are said (ii. 9) to "be reserved unto the day of judg- 
ment to be punished." The New Version translates 
this passage, " The Lord knoweth how to deliver the 
godly out of temptation, and to keep the unrighteous 
under punishment unto the day of judgment " If the 
old version be here taken as correct (and it is not 
grammatically impossible) then the answer to the objec- 
tion is that, in every one of the instances cited for 
illustration, the punitive judgment overtook the offend- 
ers this side of resurrection. This was true of the evil 
angels, cast down to hell and committed to pits of 
darkness (ii. 4), So the day of judgment which brought 
a flood upon the world of the ungodly came upon 
living men and not dead men raised (vs. 5.). Such a 
day overtook Sodom and Gomorrah and turned them 



208 The Fire of God's Anger. 

into ashes (vs. 6). These cities are said to have been 
then condemned (zarizptvsv) to overthrow. Jude tells 
us that they are present examples of " suffering the 
vengeance of eternal fire " (vs. 7). The " day of judg- 
ment and perdition of ungodly men " (iii. 7), which 
Scripture here and everywhere speaks of as ushered 
in by the coming of the Lord, is never viewed as a 
post-resurrection scene. It overtakes men who are 
marrying and giving in marriage, planting and build- 
ing, and who are saying one to another, " peace and 
safety " here on the earth (Luke xvii. 26-31, I Thess 
v. 3). All the ungodly referred to as examples in this 
connection had their day of judgment and were con- 
signed to punishment before resurrection. And it is 
therefore out of analogy with all Scripture, and speci- 
ally with the teaching of this epistle, to suppose that 
the apostle teaches that the wicked dead do not come 
to their day of judgment, nor suffer its sentence of 
punishment, until after that event. And here we call 
attention again to the fact that in every instance in 
the New Testament where the phrase "day of judg- 
ment " occurs, save one, the article is wanting in the 
Greek. The single exception is I John iv. 17, where 
believers are referred to as having " boldness in the 
day of judgment." Now if the Holy Spirit in the New 
Testament writers desired to impress upon men's minds, 
that idea of a definite future judgment day at which 
all mankind, living and dead, would be assembled, we 
ask why has he thus departed from ordinary Greek 
usage and uniformly omittted the article just where 
we should have expected to find it? Why, in speak- 



Retribution in the Catholic Epistles, 209 

ing of the future judgment of the ungodly, does he 
always say a day instead of the day of judgment? It 
is because the day of judgment for any man, or any 
generation, is not simultaneous with that of every other. 
He does not fasten attention, as has been everywhere 
assumed — and from the bonds of which traditionalism 
even our latest revisers were not free — upon one single, 
remote, universal day of judgment for which all man- 
kind, living and dead, are reserved, but upon the fact 
that the judgment of all wicked men lingereth not, and 
their damnation slumbereth not. It will just as surely 
overtake them as it did the men of Noah's or of Lot's 
day. 

If, however, the new rendering be adhered to, viz: 
— "The Lord knoweth how to keep the unrighteous 
under punishment unto (the) day of judgment/' this 
even more directly accords with our view that the 
punishment precedes resurrection. If the unrighteous 
are now kept in guard " under punishment/' then they 
must have been before condemned. Prisoners, sentenced 
to death, and who have already " suffered vengeance " 
(Jude 6), cannot be said to be awaiting trial. In this 
case the " day of judgment " spoken of cannot be for 
their individual judgment. The phrase must refer to 
that great crisis and convulsion of this present order 
of things, which is pre-eminently "the day of the 
Lord." That such a great day is approaching, all 
Scripture, and this epistle particularly, affirms. It 
also asserts that, to the then living generation of man- 
kind, it will be pre-eminently their " great day of 
judgment" (iii. 7). But it is more than that. It will 
14 



210 The Fire of God 1 s Anger. 

be a great cosmical crisis. It will especially be a 
time of judgment upon the evil angels. This is a class 
of unseen powers, whom Scripture views as having 
fastened this yoke of bondage upon the creature, 
bringing it under' this blight of sin and death. These 
especially, as Jude tells us (vs. 6), await the judgment 
of the great day. There are to be great cosmical 
changes (2 Peter iii.) involving the whole of these 
present heavens and earth. They are to be emanci- 
pated from the yoke of all evil powers. The forces 
of nature — which is the name by which science des- 
ignates the same thing — so far as they have wrought 
discord and death in this realm, are to be banished 
or subdued to the sceptre of Him who shall put down 
all rule and all authority and power. In this great 
day of judgment, therefore, there are to be liberating 
and merciful, as well as punitive features. And this 
is plainly brought to view in this chapter. The pre- 
sent heavens and earth are said to be " reserved unto 
fire." But not to a total extinction. For out of the 
fire arise a "new heavens and earth, wherein dwelleth 
righteousness. ,, So if we must understand^ the pass- 
ages ii. 9 and iii. 7 as teaching that unrighteous men 
are kept under guard unto a future day of judgment, 
we are not to suppose that they are then to be first 
tried and punished, but, as those who have been al- 
ready condemned and are suffering vengeance, they 
are bound over to await the outcome of those convul- 
sive throes in which the old order of creation must 
pass -away and give birth to a new heavens and earth. 
That is pre-eminently the great day of krisis. And 



Retribution in the Catholic Epistles. 211 

it is always connected with resurrection. It brings 
complete emancipation and redemption of body to 
those who are prepared for it (Rom. viii. 19-23). To 
others it must bring a still longer and perhaps deeper 
imprisonment in the realms of death. But all this 
pre-supposes the failure of their resurrection, and that 
their punishment is perpetuated by reason of it. So 
that from this point of view, as from every other, we 
see that punishment precedes that great change. There 
is nothing that requires or favors the view that the 
unjust are to be raised in order to be judged and 
punished. And there is nothing precluding that view, 
which is required by many other Scriptures, and which 
is involved in the very nature of resurrection, that it 
must bring, even to this class, however long postponed, 
liberation and another opportunity in life. 

The epistle of Jude is so strikingly, both in phrase 
and in tone, like the one we have just been studying 
that, whatever remarks are made upon it had best be 
brought in here. The one, however, is so much com- 
panion to the other as to leave but little to be said. 
There is the same prediction of judgment upon the 
ungodly, illustrated by the same examples of fallen 
angels, of Sodom and" Gomorrah, of the generation 
before the flood (vs. 14), and by others drawn from 
the history of Israel. We have already referred to 
the striking proof given in the sixth verse to the fact 
that wicked men are judged and punished before res- 
urrection. A class of them are said to have suffered 
the vengeance of eternal fire. In a previous chapter 
upon this subject we saw how strong is our warrant 



212 The Fire of God's Anger. 

for believing that the phrase " eternal fire " stands in 
Scripture for that all-devouring energy of Nature which, 
now under one form, now in another, consumes the 
bodies and souls of men, and that men are all the 
time being consigned to it — in death and the calami- 
ties that produce it, and in the dissolution of being 
that goes on after the death of the body until both 
body and soul are destroyed in hell. If Sodom and 
Gomorrah have already suffered this vengeance, then 
in all other cases it must be a punishment preceding 
resurrection, and hence differing from that " lake of 
fire" into which a class of the dead will be cast after 
the resurrection (Rev. xx.). That term presupposes 
still another great and final cosmical change, before 
which there is to be a final sifting of the resurrected 
dead, as there is before that a sifting of the existing 
generations of men. That age to come will have its 
own trial and day of judgment as has this. 

These two epistles, last considered, are eminently 
the epistles of judgment. And so far as their teach- 
ing goes, we have found it all in accord with that 
view of man's punishment for the sins of this life 
which places it before his resurrection, and which 
makes that event an opening of the prison doors to them 
that are bound. There is not a single passage which 
requires us to locate the sinners punishment, or which 
speaks of an eternal hell awaiting him, beyond that 
event. 

There yet remain for this examination the three 
epistles of St. John. These contain but few allusions 
to future retribution. The apostle of love dwells 



Retribution in the Catholic Epistles. 213 

mainly upon the love of Him whose Name is Love, 
and who gave His Son to be the propitiation for the 
sins of the whole world (ii. 2). He sums up all His 
gospel testimony in this declaration, — "And we have 
seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to 
be the Saviour of the world/' Unless we are to sup- 
pose that these sublime personages fail in their mission, 
there must be some kind of salvation in reserve for 
all. This we believe to be an universal redemption 
from death. This great recovery, in due time and 
order, reaches all. But, as we have often affirmed, 
this does not insure the eternal life of all, which only 
those receive who receive the Son. This great life 
and death issue remains the same in this world and 
in all worlds. The only passages which bear upon 
retribution are such as relate to this issue, " He that 
hath not the Son of God hath not the life" (v. 12). 
u . He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." 
"And ye know that no murderer hath eternal life 
abiding in him" (iii, 15). "He speaks also of a sin 
unto death" (v. 16), Whether he is speaking of a 
Christian's sin, such as is punishable by temporal 
death, or of the sin of the ungodly which dooms one 
to a far more bitter experience of death, is not clear. 
All we have then in these epistles is first, this posi- 
tive testimony as to the way of life and of death which 
we have found to characterize all the apostolic writ- 
ings ; and second, the testimony of silence that this 
death does not mean insupportable agony, beyond the 
resurrection, in an endless hell. Our contention through- 
out is that, if this were the issue the apostles were 



214 The Fire of Gocfs Anger. 

sent out to present to men, not even the apostle of love 
would have left them in any uncertainty about it. Their 
allusions to retribution, even in letters addressed to 
believers, would have given plain testimony upon a 
matter of such fearful import. But, while these 
Catholic Epistles abound in references to a future 
judgment and to the penalty of sin, they conceive of 
this judgment as near at hand, and of this penalty 
as overtaking men on the earth, and pursuing them 
into that realm of death where wicked men are bound 
in chains of darkness until that great world-judgment 
when the prince of this world shall be cast out. 
Under the administrations then to be begun and car- 
ried on by Christ and the risen sons of God (Rom. 
viii. 19) resurrection shall at last liberate, each in his 
own order, these prisoners in the pit. And all Scrip- 
ture, Old Testament and New, requires us to believe 
that when this deliverance shall come, it will be, not 
a curse, but a boon, bringing with it another gift 
of life under Him who is Lord both of the dead 
and of the living. 



CHAPTER XI. 



RETRIBUTION IN THE APOCALYPSE. 

The study of the Apocalypse has a less decisive 
bearing upon the subject we have been investigating 
than that of the other scriptures, because of its con- 
fessed obscurity. Anyone who is acquainted with the 
history of its interpretation will perceive the justice 
of this remark. Any doctrine of retribution drawn 
from its pages must, of necessity, be subject to revis- 
ion and confirmation by the plainer teachings of the 
Word. Its teaching on this subject, however, when 
closely examined, will be found in general agreement 
with what we have been already taught. It brings to 
view mainly the judgments which must overtake the 
ungodly here on the earth and in this present life. 
Here and there a glimpse is given of what awaits them 
beyond death. But there is nothing which vitiates 
the general principle which we have found to govern 
all the preceding New Testament teaching, and which 
determines that the tribulation and anguish which 
must come upon evil* men overtake them in this 
world, visiting them with calamities and death, and 
shutting them up to serve out their death-sentence in 
the hell that lies beyond death, and which must at 
some distant day give up its dead. One notable 
passage, indeed, seems to locate this punishment 
beyond the resurrection (xx. 11-15). This has been 
already examined. But we shall have yet other re- 
marks to make upon it. 

215 



216 The Fire of God's Anger. 

The first words of retribution occur in the letters 
to the seven churches. He who searches the reins 
and hearts assures them that all their acts and ways 
are naked and open before Him, and that He will 
render to each one of them according to their works 
(ii. 23). Jezebel's children, who had been seduced by 
that false prophetess, He would kill with death. He 
speaks to them of Sardis of a possible blotting out of 
their names from the book of life, and to all the 
churches, of high rewards in store for the overcomers, 
to which the unfaithful shall not attain. But all these 
warnings fall vastly short of the threat of an everlast- 
ing hell. Indeed they all seem to fall under the head 
of that corrective chastisement by which the consum- 
ing fire of God's jealousy burns out the evil in His 
children. For in the address to that church which 
was the most derelict and most rebuked — that of 
Laodicea — these Words occur : " As many as I love, I 
rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent." 
Even the possible blotting out of one's name from the 
book of life may only refer to a threatened exclusion 
from the first resurrection triumphs of the chosen body 
who live and reign with Christ, and to a bondage in 
death out of which the unfaithful servant will be saved 
so as by fire, and with the shame and suffering of 
loss (1 Cor. iii. 12-17). a If any man destroyeth the 
temple of God, him shall God destroy." But our God 
sometimes destroys in order to save, and kills in 
order to make alive. (See Deut. xxxii. 24, 36, 39, 43 ; 
1 Cor. v. s). 

After the epistles to the churches of Asia the visions 



Retribution in the Apocalypse. 217 

relate to the judgments to be visited upon an ungodly 
world, and especially upon apostate Christendom. A 
rider upon a pale horse, whose name was Death, is 
given authority over the fourth part of the earth, to 
kill with sword, with famine, and with death, and with 
the wild beasts of the earth (vi. 8). 

After the opening of the sixth seal (vs. 12-17), great 
political commotions are described under the symbols 
of natural convulsions. There was a great earth- 
quake. The sun is darkened and the moon becomes 
like blood. The stars fall from heaven, and the 
heaven is rolled up as a scroll. The kings and princes 
of the earth, and every class, in terror, call upon the 
rocks and mountains to fall upon them and hide them 
" from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and 
from the wrath of the Lamb : for the great day of their 
wrath is come. This precise imagery frequently 
occurs in the Old Testament prophets in connection 
with great national judgments. In Isaiah xxxiv. all 
nations are summoned to hear. " For the indignation 
of the Lord is upon all nations, and His fury upon all 
their armies; He hath utterly destroyed them, He 
hath delivered them to the slaughter. Their slain also 
shall be cast out, and the mountains shall be melted 
with their blood. And all the host of heaven shall be 
dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together 
as a scroll; and all their host shall fall down as the 
leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from 
the fig tree." See also Isaiah xiii. 1-13. An invasion 
of the land of Judea is described by the prophet 
Joel (ch. ii.) under the same imagery. St. Peter at 



218 The Fire of God's Anger. 

Pentecost (Acts ii. 16 20) speaks of this day of great 
convulsion as then introduced by the outpouring of 
the Holy Ghost, whose fire is a fire of judgment as 
well as of purgation and salvation. All these passages 
look forward, however, to that consummating judgment 
which Scripture especially designates as the great day 
of the Lord. And, inasmuch as it gives many indica- 
tions that that will be a crisis in the natural world, as 
well as in human affairs, we may well suppose 
that cosmical, as well as social and political commotions, 
.will add to its terrors. There are closer bonds of 
sympathy between nature and its highest creature, man, 
than we have yet discovered. But the point at which 
we are now aiming is to show that these terrifying 
and destructive judgments, whatever be their character, 
are visited upon living generations of men. They do 
not bring to view the resurrected dead. 

The same thing is true of the woes announced by 
the seven angels with the seven trumpets (chs. viii. ix). 
They are visions of war, and famine, and death and 
plague. We have always suspected that these apoca- 
lyptic visions, as they are seen to occur in the invisible 
world, so they describe events and changes that trans- 
pire first in the realm of spiritual realities. Behind 
all this arena of human affairs there are great warring 
powers in an invisible realm (Eph. vi. 10-20). There 
are spiritual blights, and famines, and plagues that 
smite the souls of men and nations before these things 
reveal themselves in the natural sphere. Men are 
often smitten with death in this region before they are 
stricken with physical death. Locust-shaped demons 



Retribution in the Apocalypse. 219 

coming forth from the pit, and over whom Apollyon 
is king, go forth on their devastating work first in the 
sphere of human souls. Before Mahommedan hordes, 
or any form of earthly enemies, can make havoc of the 
professing church, or desolate the nations of mankind, 
something corresponding to this dread vision must 
have occured in that spiritual realm where the real 
conflict for the dominion of the world is going on, 
and of which the sorrows and conflicts enacting on the 
earth are but the shadows. We believe that all the 
apocalyptic symbols need a new interpretation from 
this point of view. 

These remarks, however, are apart from our present 
purpose, which is to call attention to the fact that these 
scenes of divine retribution relate to living generations 
on the earth, and shed no light upon the question 
of what lies for man beyond death. In the eleventh 
chapter there is, indeed, the statement that the time 
had come " of the dead to be judged, and to give 
their reward to thy servants, and to the saints, and 
to them that fear thy name, the small and the great." 
But the connection shows that the reference is to a 
vindication of God's servants and saints , who had 
died in the faith of their reward without the sight 
In the fourteenth chapter we meet with a special woe 
denounced upon the worshippers of the beast, a class 
which we infer from a statement in the previous 
chapter had included the larger part of mankind. 
"There was given to him authority over every tribe 
and people and tongue and nation. And all that 
dwell on the earth shall worship him, everyone whose 



220 The Fire of God's Anger. 

name hath not been written in the book of life of 
the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world." 
(vs. 7, 8). It may be that the special woe in reserve 
for this class applies only to those of them who 
reject the warning of the angel (xiv. 6, f) and per- 
sist in their beast-worship. But a third angel makes 
loud proclamation of this special woe, as follows. 

" If any man worshippeth the beast and his image, 
and receiveth a mark upon his forehead, or upon 
his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the 
wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup 
ol his anger; and he shall be tormented with fire 
and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels 
and of the Lamb; and the smoke of their torment 
goeth up for ever and ever ; and they have no rest 
day and night, they that worship the beast and his 
image, and whoso receiveth the mark of his name." 

It is to be observed that this torment comes in a 
series of judgments which, as we have seen, are visited 
upon the living generations of men. The last plagues 
of the seven angels with the seven vials, which follow 
in the succeeding chapters, are of this same character. 
This single premonition of torment has been regarded 
as a lifting of the veil to reveal what awaits these 
sinners beyond the resurrection. But these worship- 
pers of the beast cannot be supposed to have been 
killed before this woe falls upon them. Indeed it is 
stated in ch. xix. 21, that they are killed by it. It 
introduces an idea foreign to the whole series of 
judgments to suppose that this alone relates to that 
torment in body which tradition affirms to be await- 



Retribution in the Apocalypse. 221 

ing lost men in that distant future. It very likely, 
indeed, refers to that torment of soul which is pro- 
longed beyond the death of the body, which is a 
part of the death process before a wicked man's de- 
struction is complete. But this we have uniformly 
found to be the punishment which precedes resurrec- 
tion. Viewing this judgment therefore as a torment- 
ing plague upon those ungodly men who, in the 
last days, are the votaries of Antichrist, we are pre- 
cluded from finding any reference in the passage to 
an eternal torment beyond their resurrection. The 
judgment falls upon them long before that event. 

It is the smoke of their torment which ascendeth 
up unto the ages of the ages. An evidence and 
memorial is thus given to all coming ages of the 
destructive judgment which has made an end of the 
beast and his worshippers, as the usurpers of the 
honor and worship that belong to God only. This 
accords with the evident meaning of the symbol where 
it first occurs in Scripture. In Isaiah xxxiv, it is 
predicted of the land of Edom in the day of the 
Lord's vengeance, " The streams thereof shall be turned 
into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and 
the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall 
not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof 
shall go up forever : from generation to generation it 
shall lie waste; none shall pass through it forever 
and ever" (9-1 1). Some explanation must be given 
to these expressions consistent with the subsequent 
promise that all the earth shall be renewed (Isa. lxv). 
They are thus limited to a visitation that shall con- 



*~* The Fire of God's Anger. 

tinue to the end of the age. They may include also 
the idea that in the renovated heavens and earth the 
land of Edom shall find no place, but that the mem- 
ory of it shall be blotted out forever. But they do 
not and cannot mean that the burning destruction ot 
that land shall go on endlessly. In like manner we 
are not required to attach such a meaning to the 
prophetic phraseology in the Revelation. The fact 
that the smoke of the torment goes up unto the ages 
of the ages does not prove that the tormenting process 
never ends, any more than the fact that the smoke of 
Edom's destruction goes up forever proves that the 
destructive process never ends. To this it may be 
objected that in chap. xix. 20, we are told that the 
beast and the false prophet, who are both overcome 
by the conquering Word of God — the rider upon the 
white horse, — are together cast alive into the lake that 
burneth with fire and brimstone."* In ch. xx. 10 we 
read* further, " And the devil that deceived them (the 
nations) was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, 
where are also the beast and the false prophet; and 
they shall be tormented day and night forever and 
ever. ,, It is argued that here at least the endless tor- 
ment of these three, two of whom are human persons, 
is distinctly affirmed. But the answer to this is that 
we are by no means sure that the terms " beast " and 
" false prophet " represent individual men. In the 



* It is to be remarked that here we have another description of the 
fate that shall overtake the adherents of the beast. They " were killed 
with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, even the sword which 
came forth out of his mouth : and all the birds were filled with their flesh." 



Retribution in the Apocalypse. 223 

Apocalypse of the Old Testament, from which that of 
the New partly derives its imagery, the term " beast " 
represents a worldly political system (Dan. vii. il). 
Its being cast into the burning flame represents the 
utter destruction of that system whose characteristics 
were such that the symbol of a beast is applied to it, 
in contrast with that kingdom over which there is 
"one like unto a son of man." What these passages 
bring to view is probably the utter destruction of 
these two hostile systems, set forth under the figure 
of the casting into a lake of fire of their symbolic 
representatives, with the devil who energized them. 
Whatever may be true of the future destiny of the 
devil, no argument for the endless torment of lost men 
can be drawn from these passages, unless it can be 
proved that the two great enemies here brought to 
view are individual men. The analogies of Scripture, 
as we have seen, lead us rather to regard them as 
systems. In ch. xx. 14, we are told that death and 
hades are to be cast into this same lake of fire. And 
surely these are not human persons. If it be asked 
how systems can be " tormented," we can only reply 
that as they are here personified, so they may be 
represented as suffering the torment of living persons 
in the remediless destruction that overtakes them, and 
in the everlasting shame that covers them. 

In ch. xxi. 8, we pre told of the casting into this 1 
same lake of fire of classes of sinners who are un-i 
doubtedly human. "But for the fearful, and unbeliev-' 
ing, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, 
and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part 



224 The Fire of God^s Anger. 

shall be in the lake that burnetii with fire and brim- 
stone; which is the second death." This passage, 
however, does not prove the endless torment of these 
sinners. It rather points to their destruction in that 
deeper pit of death which this Book several times 
refers to as the final grave of all those enemies, in- 
cluding death, who are to be destroyed out of that 
perfect order in which God shall be all in alL It is 
an impressive declaration that for wicked men there 
can be no possible place in the new and heavenly- 
order (xxii. 15). Here it may be well for us to inquire 
into the meaning of that agent of divine purgation 
and retribution so often brought to view in these 
closing chapters — 

THE LAKE OF FIRE. 

We have all along found, in these studies, that all 
Scripture, Old and New, makes frequent reference to 
a future renovation of this present cosmos. The in- 
strument of this renovation is the eternal fire, by 
which term is brought to view that devouring energy 
with which Nature is ever consuming worn out and 
worthless forms of life so that, out of their grave, may 
arise forms more worthy and enduring. Sinful man, 
in obedience to this law, must go down into this pit 
of eternal fire, unless the eternal life of God be im- 
parted to him through Jesus Christ. The Son of Man, 
as the divine Judge and sorter of men, is even now 
consigning wicked men to the destructive operation of 
this eternal fire, while the righteous go into life eter- 
nal. That crisis which is known in Scripture as His 
appearing consummates this work of judgment and 



Retribution in the Apocalypse, 225 

brings to an end what is styled this present age or 
world. It brings with it also a first stage in His 
work of cosmical change and renewal. Satan, who is 
the author of physical as well as moral evil, will then 
be bound (Rev. xx). And life will then triumph com- 
pletely over death in the person of those elect saints 
who share with Him the glories of this administra- 
tion. It must bring with it also new displays of His 
power and grace to the nations of mankind, who are 
no longer deceived and blinded by this great enemy. 
But this is not the final stage of His triumph. Nor 
does it complete that transfiguration of the old order 
into the new of which we have the picture in chapters 
xxi and xxii. A preceding feature of this final reno- 
vation is the lake of fire. Into it are cast death and 
hell and all God's enemies. The term brings to view 
a still deeper working of that consuming energy with 
which the Creator has charged this system of His 
works, and by which its own purgation and emanci- 
pation shall finally be effected. All its hostile powers 
shall be yoked into submission to His exalted Son. 
Its fair fields shall no longer be blighted with a curse, 
nor ravaged by the rude hand of death (xxi. 4, xxii. 
3). All things shall be radiant with the light and 
buoyant with the life of God. The lake of fire is not 
presented to us apart from, but as preparatory to this 
result. It is indeed that final abyss, prepared for the 
devil and his angels, down into whose devouring 
depths must go all these evil powers who have blighted 
God's fair heritage, and all evil beings, including men, 

who are so bound up with this system as to refuse 
15 



22G The Fire of God's Anger, 

God's way of deliverance through accepted death with 
Christ out of the old order, and resurrection into the 
new. But we shall miss altogether the meaning of 
the lake of fire, if we regard it merely as a place pro- 
vided for the eternal torment of these lost ones. Like 
all God's wondrous works and ways its aim and action 
are beneficent. It is the bath of fire out of which 
the heavens and earth finally emerge into eternal 
sweetness and light, a home of splendor and delight 
for the ransomed millions of mankind. While there- 
fore all the preceeding judgments of this book relate 
to the living generations of mankind who are dealt 
with in judgment by the exalted Christ preparatory to 
His coming, and so precede the resurrection, we are 
not surprised to find one great judgment-scene depicted 
as coming in after that event, and as preceding the 
final crisis which winds up His millenial reign. The 
first stage of His triumphant reign brought with it 
the outbirth into His life and glory of only a selected 
class of men. And the creature did not attain to its 
final deliverance. It was lightened only with the 
dawn of its full glory. But in its final throes, and 
with its complete emancipation, it must cast out all 
its dead. " And the sea gave up the dead which were 
in it; and death and Hades gave up the dead which 
were in them" (xx. 13). We have already, in exami- 
ning this judgment scene, concluded that it condenses 
into one picture a long-continued judgment process, 
in which all that Scripture teaches concerning the 
redemptive character of resurrection must have due 
place. The whole scene connects itself with the great 



Retribution in the Apocalypse. 227 

cosmical deliverance which the next chapter immedi- 
ately describes. 

That there are certain features difficult to understand 
in these closing passages which allude to future retri- 
bution, we may well admit. That there is a hopeless 
doom for incorrigible sinners in the lake of fire, beyond 
the resurrection, must be allowed. But that resurrec- 
tion introduces them immediately to this doom, without 
any previous benefit or opportunity coming to them 
with the gift of recovered life, must be denied. For, 
as we have seen, this lies in the verv idea of resur- 
rection. It is implied in all the glimpses of it that 
gleam out on the pages of the Old Testament, and in 
the promises of the New. The point we have to 
consider is whether, in view of all the testimony of 
Scripture to the effect that some character of blessing 
has been secured by Christ's redemption to all the 
families of the earth, both dead and living, and in 
view of the fact that it uniformly describes the pun- 
ishment of sin as a subjection to death, and to an 
immediate hell which long precedes resurrection, we 
are warranted in allowing a few obscure allusions in 
this unexplained book to govern or set aside the 
teaching of all these earlier and plainer scriptures. 
That they have had this undue influence is manifest. 
These passages seemed on their surface to teach the 
doctrine of endless torment. And therefore Christians 
have generally read this doctrine into our Lords 
teaching about hell and its quenchless fires. (Mark ix. 
53-50, etc.) But, as we have seen, His sayings plainly 
refer to a possible destruction of man's present em- 



228 The Fire of GocPs Anger. 

bodied being in an impending gehenna. Even the 
judgment scene in Matt, xxv does not primarily look 
beyond the resurrection. A baleful glare from these 
passages in the Apocalypse has been cast over all this 
earlier New Testament teaching. Even the sermons 
and letters of the apostles, which do not contain a 
single plain reference to the doctrine of an eternal 
torment in hell, have been made lurid with this bor- 
rowed light. And splendid promises of restitution, 
spoken by the mouth of ancient prophets, have been 
belittled or annulled. The point for which we are all 
along contending is that certain great and merciful 
principles of divine administration underlie the whole 
plan of God in Creation and redemption; that these 
crop out through the whole of revelation and must 
govern its interpretation. Especially must the obscure 
teaching of this book of hidden mysteries yield to 
them. One of these deepest principles is His purpose 
to lift up the human race out of its pit of death 
through the death and resurrection of a Redeemer; 
requiring that, in the execution of this purpose, neither 
death nor hell shall defeat Him, but be made 
tributary thereto. The resurrection of all, therefore, 
must be the redemption of all to another standing 
in life. This itself is a boon. It does not make 
necessary the salvation of all to eternal life. There 
is a possible second death beyond the resurrection 
into which some sink. But neither this threatened 
doom, nor any threat of the darkest passages we have 
been examining, must be allowed to set aside this 
great principle, that death cannot defeat God in His 






Retribution in the Apocalypse. 229 

great purpose to bring blessing to all the families of 
the earth through a conquering seed, and that His 
answer to the work of the devil who brought sin 
into the world, so that death passed upon all men, is 
the gift of a Second Man to be his destroyer, through 
whose righteousness the free gift has come to all men 
of justification to another life. Sinners may incur, 
indeed, a fearful loss of body and soul in hell before 
this recovery. Moreover, it can reach them only after 
the just judgment of God has been fully satisfied in 
their case. And it cannot bring to them assured 
deliverance from bondage to the creature. Hence 
their great need of immediate salvation. Let none of 
this class therefore, because God is a " God of hope," 
forget that He is also a consuming fire, and that the 
longer they go on in sin, the deeper must they sink 
and the longer must they remain in the abyss of His 
wrath, — the more complete must be their wreck of 
being, and the fewer the elements of hope in its re- 
covery. 



CHAPTER XII. 



REVIEW. 

We have endeavored thus faithfully to trace the 
doctrine of retribution for sin, as it is unfolded in the 
Scriptures, and to place, it side-by-side with that other 
great feature of the divine administration, the purpose 
of redemption. And we have done this in the in- 
terest of the many sad and earnest souls who fervently 
believe the Bible to be the Word of God, and who 
yet are painfully oppressed in receiving its teachings 
about retribution, because they have failed to see how 
these are balanced and explained by the other side of 
the divine dealings in redemption. 

And yet these two sides are presented to us at the 
very outset of revelation On the one side Adam is 
sentenced to what appears to be a hopeless doom. He 
was to die and to return to dust. No intimation is 
given in the sentence that this destruction was not 
to be final. And yet a gleam of hope is afterwards 
given in the promise of a conquering Seed who should 
bruise the serpent's head. Later on, Abraham is called 
to become the father of the promised seed. And it 
is repeatedly declared that in him and in his seed all 
the families of the earth should be blessed. 

We began these inquiries with the conviction that 
God's promises cannot mean less than they convey, 
and that when He says "all ¥ He means all. Hitherto 
the church seems to have found no middle ground 
between a crude universalism, which both reason and 

230 



Review. 231 

Scripture condemn, and the hopeless damnation of that 
immense proportion of mankind who have died in 
their sins. It has therefore been compelled to divest 
the future resurrection of this class of every element 
of hope. It has thus failed to recognize one of the 
most vital and fundamental features in God's unfold- 
ing plan, viz., that resurrection, as a recovery of man 
out of that death-state into which sin has cast him, 
is essentially redemptive. She has therefore failed to 
see that this provision to restore all men to another 
life is His way of making good His original promise 
to bless all mankind. This does not imply that all 
shall at last attain eternal life and blessedness. But 
it does mean that this is not His final administration 
of grace toward lost men. It means that death can- 
not defeat His purpose to bless all generations, but 
that He will bring from the land of the enemy, and 
within the sphere of His economy of grace and power, 
those whom it has not here reached, -and whom His just 
judgments have for their sins consigned to death and hell. 

These two principles, that His retributions for sin 
are fixed and inevitable, but that death, sin's wages, 
cannot snatch His creatures out of His hands nor de- 
feat His purposes, we have traced through the 
Scriptures. We have found that He is the God of 
the dead, as well as of the living, and that all His 
great promises of blessing pre-suppose, and require 
for their fulfilment, the resurrection of the dead. 

Beginning with that profound passage, the Song of 
Moses (Deut. xxxii), we found that it was built up 
around these two principles, and that they furnish 



232 The Fire of God's Anger, 

the key to the " secret things " stored up among its 
treasures. God's providential dealings with the world 
of mankind, and especially with His chosen people, 
are there brought to view. The claims of His right- 
eousness, which require that they, and that all nations, 
be adjudged to calamities and to death for their sins, 
are impressively set forth. The fire of His anger must 
burn against them to the lowest hell (vs. 22). And 
yet He asserts His power over all the enemies who 
had brought them into this sad plight, and even over 
death. He who kills can make alive. And He who 
gave such fearful power to "the enemy and the 
avenger " must revenge Himself even against him, and 
bring in a salvation in which all nations should re- 
joice with His people. And that the " all nations" 
signified are not merely the nations of some future 
millenial period, but the nations also who had suffered 
these visitations of His anger, and gone down to cap- 
tivity in death, is implied in the whole tenor of the 
passage. This is the very hidden truth it contains, 
the precious secret sealed up among its treasures (vs. 34) 
that, although God must allow the adversary to people 
his realms with prisoners, and death to lead down to hell 
its multitude of captives, yet even these enemies should 
be compelled to give back their trophies, and be con- 
sumed in the wrathful fires themselves had kindled. 
These twin facts of judgment and redemption are 
illustrated in all Old Testament history. They are 
amplified in all subsequent psalm and prophecy. All 
intelligent readers of the Bible confess this. But all 
do not see that these principles overleap the bounds of 



Review. 233 

death and govern God's administrations in the ages to 
come. And few see that this must necessarily be so. 
For otherwise His great promises must be miserably 
diminished and His purposes thwarted. And few see 
that His purpose in saving a chosen seed in this age 
has relation to His wider purpose to bless " all the 
nations of the earth " in an age to come. But with 
this key in hand, and with the firm conviction that death 
cannot defeat God nor annul the least of His promises, 
we have been enabled to find in the Old Testament 
abundant hints and suggestions and direct declarations 
of His purpose to bring future blessing to all mankind 
through their resurrection from the dead. 

We have seen, on the one hand, that the Bible 
throughout reveals a definite penalty for sin. Wicked 
men and nations must go down to sheol. There they 
are held as captives — prisoners in the pit where no 
water is. Many Old Testament passages view this 
prison as a place of silence and of gloom in which 
the dead lie either in an unconscious state, or at best 
in "the miserable consciousness of not being." It is 
only in the New Testament that Hades is viewed as 
a place of torment. But this torment seems to be 
but the accompaniment of that destructive process 
which goes on there to the destruction of even the 
soul in hell, until nothing of man is left but a naked 
spirit in the outer darkness. But many Old Testament 
allusions to this bondage in death imply that God's 
pity would not forsake them even here, although driven 
out to the " outmost parts of heaven " (Deut. xxx. 4). 
" For the Lord shall judge His people, and repent 



234 The Fire of God's Anger. 

Himself for His servants, when He seeth that their 
power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left" 
(Deut. xxxii. 36). " Even the captives of the mighty 
shall be taken away and the prey of the terrible shall 
be delivered; for I will contend with him that con- 
tendeth with thee, and I will save thy children" (Isa. 
xlix. 25). An extended examination of the Psalms 
and Prophets has shown us that the captives so often 
referred to as the future subjects of delivering mercy 
are the captives in the realms of death. All minor 
captivities prefigure this one. Hence these captives are 
often spoken of as the children of death (Ps. lxxix. 11, 
cii. 20). They are viewed as captives in the land of 
the enemy, whom the Lord should ransom from the 
hand of one stronger than they (Jer. xxxi. 11, 16). 
And that unregenerate men are made the subjects of 
this recovery is plain from the fact that this is the 
very class in view in all these passages, which speak 
first of the sins which consigned them to this captivity, 
and of their subsequent release. In Hosea xiii. it is 
manifestly the apostate Israel, whom the Lord had re- 
jected from being His people, the Ephraim, joined to 
his idols, of whom He afterwards declares, " I will 
ransom them from the power of the grave (sheol). I 
will redeem them from death ; O death where are thy 
plagues? O Sheol where is thy destruction? re- 
pentance shall be hid from mine eyes." We have 
found that restoration from this bondage is promised, 
in due time and order, to even sinful nations that de- 
bauched and oppressed Israel, and who had been 
destroyed under the heaviest hand of God's judgments, — 



Review. 235 

to Assyria and Egypt, to Moab and Ammon and Elam, 
to Samaria and to Sodom (Ezek. xvi). Only a salvation 
of so wide a scope as this could meet the require- 
ments of such far-reaching and comprehensive prophecies 
as that, for example, of Isaiah xxv, in which all nations 
are invited to a feast of fat things prepared for them 
by the Lord God, who shall destroy from off the face 
of the earth all that now hides His glory from the 
nations, and swallow up death in victory. 

A wide generalization of Old Testament passages has 
thus established for us these two principles: i. The 
fire of God's anger must burn against all evil-doers to 
overthrow and consume them in death and hell. 
2. This u land of the enemy " where they lie as out- 
casts in bondage and gloom is not a territory beyond 
the reach of His conquering arm. He has provided to 
ransom in due time and order all these prisoners in 
the pit; and so, over and beyond this region of de- 
served judgment for sin, to make good His promise of 
blessing to all the families of the earth. 

Coming to the New Testament, we began its study 
with the principle that it cannot at any point contra- 
dict the Old Christ came not to supersede, but to 
fulfill the law and the prophets. His words therefore 
were spoken in reference to this Old Testament reve- 
lation. They were designed to illumine and unfold 
it. All His sayings therefore about hell and the wrath 
to come must be in accordance with the principles 
we have there discovered. And nothing more is 
needed to bring them into such harmony, than to put 
all His words about future judgment, and hell, and 



236 The Fire of God's Anger. 

unquenchable fire, precisely where they belong, — as 
relating to what befalls wicked men before resurrec- 
tion. Such an interpretation of them is so natural 
and obvious that it is a marvel that the church should 
have been so long blind to it. A single passage in the 
most obscure book of the Bible (Rev. xx. 11-15), which 
speaks of a judgment of the dead after their awakening 
from death, has been suffered to dominate and pervert 
the meaning of all the earlier New Testament passages 
which speak of a speedy judgment for sin, and of a suf- 
fering in hell awaiting sinners just beyond the borders 
of this earthly life. Just where the Old Testament 
located sheol, there must we locate the New Testament 
hell. They are but the same place of punishment.* 
The division of this realm of death into a Hades, 
and a Gehenna widely separated in character and in 
time, is but a part of the obscuring process above re- 
ferred to. It was in Hades that the rich man lifted 
up his eyes being in torment. Gehenna is only a 
deeper pit in that realm of destruction which the Old 
Testament covers by the broader name of Sheol. 
Were it not for some of these false notions imported 
into our New Testament reading, no one would have 
ever thought that when John the Baptist describes the 
Messiah's work of judgmeut as a burning up of the 
chaff with " unquenchable fire " that anything more 
was meant by that term than its frequent Old Testa- 
ment usage implies. And when Jesus repeatedly 
warns men against the danger of hell-fire, and that it 

*See upon this point Prof. Shedd's Doctrine of Endless Punishment, 
pg. 22, et seq. 



Review. 237 

is far better that they should now mortify the sins in 
their members than lose the whole body and soul in 
hell, no one would have supposed that he was refer- 
ring to a future resurrection body, brought up from 
the grave to be damned, but to the loss of their present 
heritage in life and manhood. What he has all along 
in view in such passages is an impending destruction 
awaiting sinful men, and from which He sought to 
rescue all who would receive Him by the gift of an 
eternal life which would make them even now tri- 
umphant over death. 

And so His words of judgment, which relate to the 
trial of living generations of mankind, have been 
treated as if they had primary and sole reference to 
the masses of the resurrected dead. And this too, in 
the face of His repeated declarations that they would 
overtake the world in the same way that the men of 
Noah's and of Lot's day were surprised, and that they 
would begin before that generation passed away. 
No one would deny, of course, that Jesus Christ is 
exalted to be the Judge of the dead as well as of 
the living. But it still remains the fact that the 
nations who know Him not, and who obey not His 
gospel, and who are consigned by Him to eternal 
fire (Matt. xxv. 31-46), are the living nations of man- 
kind who pass in review before His throne. The 
words describe a pre-resurrection scene, and do not 
attempt to define what may be in the purposes of 
God for these doomed masses beyond their resurrec- 
tion. Indeed it must be borne in mind in interpret- 
ing all these words of Jesus that He did not intend 



238 The Fire of God's Anger. 

to throw the great light of His approaching triumph 
upon these dark shadows of judgment before it took 
place. He chose to wait, until after the Son of Man 
was risen from the dead, before illumining the minds 
of even His disciples to the meaning of this great 
event — its relation to all God's great promises in the 
past, and to His widening purposes of grace toward 
the world in the future. This explains why it is 
that the harshest words in the Bible about future 
punishment are those of the loving Lord and Saviour. 
The time for the full disclosure of His redeeming 
plan was not yet What hope for the world was 
couched in His- resurrection could not yet be made 
known, except in the way of hints which even His 
chosen followers did not apprehend. And this ex- 
plains why, as these studies have made plain to us, 
our traditional notions of a future hell of fire and 
threats of everlasting torment, find no place in either 
the sermons or the epistles of the apostles. In con- 
formity with what we learned of the teachings of the 
Master, we found that the wrath to come in their 
view was a fearful punishment awaiting the ungodly 
in death and before resurrection. The harshest pas- 
sage in either St. Paul's addresses or letters is that 
in 2 Thess. i. 9, where he speaks of an eternal de- 
struction from the presence of the Lord and from 
the glory of His power. But every careful reader of 
the context, and of these two epistles, will see that 
this passage applies to a class of sinners living on 
the earth and who are saying " peace and safety " at 
the time of the Lord's coming. The resurrected dead 



Review. 239 

are not brought to view. And so in the Catholic 
Epistles " the great day of judgment and perdition of 
ungodly men " is one which overtakes men on the 
earth. There is absolutely nothing therefore in the 
words of Christ, or in the words He put by the Holy 
Ghost into the mouth of His apostles, or upon their 
pens, which sets aside the force of the principles re- 
quired by the Old Testament teaching^ that man's 
judgment and suffering for sin lie in death, and in 
that land of darkness and bondage into which souls 
pass beyond it; and aothing to interfere with that 
great principle outlined there, but brought into clearer 
light in the New Testament, that this punishment is 
bounded for all men by a hope of resurrection which 
shall reach them, each in his own time and order, 
as the result of the ransom paid for all. Not even 
the doctrine of retribution as brought to view in the 
Apocalypse can set aside these principles. Indeed 
that vision is all in harmony with it. The passages 
which seem to be exceptional cannot really be so. 
Their interpretation must yield to the requirements 
of these great principles which underlie all Scripture, 
and which are fundamental in the plan of redemption 
it was written to reveal. This promised recovery of 
all from the death-state, which is sin's wages, is not 
the salvation of all to eternal life, but to the blessings 
and the opportunities of a restored human life. The 
Bible brings to view two orders of life, of which Adam 
and Christ are the respective heads. In Christ there 
is eternal life. Man, in union with Him, becomes 
partaker of the life of God and the heir of all things. 



240 The Fire of GocPs Anger. 

This life is freed from all bondage to the creature. 
It is unfettered, glorious and endless. Only the 
saints are raised in the fashion of this divine man- 
hood. Other men must come forth to a life not 
yet freed from this bondage, and under the law of 
change and corruption. Such was the life of Adam at 
his creation. He was peccable and perishable, — only 
a candidate for the eternal life. As Scripture speaks 
of only these two orders of manhood, and as wicked 
men cannot bear the image of the heavenly, they 
must be raised into the sphere of a natural and 
earthy manhood. This leaves them still on trial and 
under judgment. This is " the resurrection of judg- 
ment" (John v. 29). And this we believe to be the 
trial of the dead brought to view in the judgment of 
the great white throne. The once dead in that scene are 
not cast into the lake of fire for the sins of this life. They 
have already been sent to hell for these. That lake can 
only be for those who fail in their second trial of life, 
and who are therefore condemned to the second death. 
The same principles of the divine dealing in both 
judgment and redemption are thus seen to pervade all 
Scripture. All its threatenings of destructive punish- 
ment for sin are verified. And room is made for the 
fulfilment of all its promises without evasion or abate- 
ment. The Sheol of the Old Testament and the 
Gehenna 01 the New alil^e await the sinner this side of 
resurrection. His judgment does not wait until some 
far-distant assize, nor does His damnation slumber. 
Hell now yawns beneath him. All Jesus' words about 
it are rightly understood only as we thus locate them. 



Review. 211 

Resurrection for unjust men does not mean indeed 
what it does for the just. We may well suppose that 
the grade and potency of the restored life will be ac- 
cording to character. " To every seed his own body." 
But there is nothing in the severest denunciations of 
Jesus, nor in His most fearful threatenings of wrath, 
to exclude the idea that beyond this region of judg- 
ment there is hope in resurrection. All that is needed 
to adjust these two sides of truth to one another is 
to know that what is exposed to this fearful peril is 
man's present endowment and heritage in life — that he 
may suffer the entire loss of this, and that its de- 
struction is final. And yet the grace of God may again 
take up his case, as it did that of Adam, by restoring 
to him another life on another basis, with another 
opportunity to win the crown of life which seemed 
lost to him forever. In no other way can the constant 
assertion of Scripture be made good that blessing of 
some sort has been procured for all the families of 
the earth through the redemption that is in Christ 
Jesus. If this promise does not reach over to the 
dead, then the greater part of these families have no 
share in it, and His Messianic work as Lord of both 
the dead and the living remains unfulfilled. 

All this accords too with what we have learned 
from Scripture and from science of the nature of man. 
He is an embodied image of God. He was made to 
have dominion over all His works. He now stands 
on the summit of created life. The forces that rule 
in this created system, and which we call forces of 
nature, but which Scripture views as living powers or 
16 



242 The Fire of God's Anger. 

angels, are made tributary to him. Death, the wages 
of sin, disembodies man and so discrowns and casts 
him out of his heritage. But man has not only an 
earthly body, bringing him into relation to the created 
system. He is a living soul. The breath or spirit of 
God enters also into ihe constitution of his being, and 
forms within him " the spirit of a man." He is there- 
fore body, soul, and spirit. Each one of these elements 
is necessary to constitute him a man. The soul seems 
to be an intermediate structure between the material 
body and the immaterial spirit. And, like the body, 
it is perishable. Jesus teaches that both body and soul 
may be destroyed in that pit of the devouring energy 
of natural forces to which He gives the name of hell- 
fire. But He also teaches that the soul may survive 
and suffer there — how long we know not — before the 
spirit is cast out into the outer darkness. Whether 
the spirit, after being divested of these elements of 
manhood, retains the consciousness of its former 
human personality we do not know. All we know is 
that it ceases to be a man. A disembodied ghost is 
not a man. And, therefore, the destruction of such a 
being out of the life and estate of manhood is com- 
plete. The man is dead. And this death-state is 
emphatically the wages of sin. But just here comes 
in the importance of the doctrine and hope of resur- 
rection. It is the re-investiture of the dead and outcast 
one with life in manhood. And just here lies the 
mistake of the old eschatology. It virtually denies 
any proper death of the man before resurrection. And 
it unspeakably degrades resurrection into an instru- 



Review. 243 

ment of aggravated retribution and torment. It robs 
that which is always viewed in Scripture as a "hope" 
of every element of hope, and makes it an unmitigated 
curse. And here also it comes into conflict with 
what even Science teaches concerning the progress of 
life. It teaches that this progress culminates in man. 
Science is blind indeed to the fact that the goal of 
this progress is not the earthy but the risen man. 
But if it could once perceive that man is to take on 
another form of manhood beyond the grave, it would 
scorn the idea that this can be for purposes of degra- 
dation, and that Nature's grand progress toward per- 
fected life is to be thus turned backward. No, the 
idea of resurrection for the unjust must be either 
abandoned, or we must admit that it is even for them 
another beginning and on a higher scale. For it lies 
in the very nature of life that it must build itself 
up into more perfect forms. And if any of its organ- 
isms refuse to yield to this law of advance toward 
perfection, it must refuse to make for itself a home 
in such. They must be rejected out of the sphere of 
life forever."* So that while it must be admitted that 
some may perish out of the line of progress, in a 
second death, it yet remains true that the harmonies 

*A most thoughtful book on this subject is Prof. Drummond's Natural 
Law in the Spiritual World. It is to be regretted that this book, while 
it sets forth with much ability and wealth of illustration this feature of 
the divine economy, overlooks so much the redemptive side of God's 
working, even in the realm of nature. The author should have drawn 
from this source analogies to prove resurrection, and so have thrown the 
light of this hope upon the divine plan of the world. The poverty cf 
this feature in its philosophy of human destiny is the great defect of 
that otherwise useful book. 



244 The Fire of GocPs Anger. 

of both Scripture and of Science require us to be- 
lieve that resurrection is essentially redemptive and 
benignant. 

This view of resurrection has a far better basis 
however than Science can furnish. It is inwoven into 
the whole warp and woof of Scripture. It underlies 
the divine plan of the world and of man as its heir, 
as therein revealed. It is necessary to its completion. 
It is essential to any right knowledge of God. With- 
out it we cannot rightly know His Name, which is 
Love, nor His Son whom He sent to be the Saviour 
of the world. Our conception of the very God we 
worship must be distorted, and our spiritual life, which 
consists in the knowledge of Him, must be defective. 
His gospel will be shorn of half its truth and grace. 
What the world needs, in order to know the Father, 
and what the Church needs, in this day of its bewil- 
derment concerning man's destiny, and the mystery of 
hell, is the recovery of the doctrine of a universal 
resurrection, from the region of despair and unending 
curse, to the ground upon which St. Paul placed it in 
his address before Felix, when he declared his "hope 
toward God that there shall be a resurrection, both of 
the just and of the unjust "■ (Acts xxiv. 15). Never 
shall we understand the Scriptures without this key, — 
that the provision in Christ to make all alive who 
died in Adam is God's way of making good^His primal 
redemption promise to bless through a chosen seed 
all the families of the earth. 

It will be apparent also to any who have followed 
us closely through this investigation, that it leaves 



Review. 245 

the Bible doctrine of present and future punishment 
for sin unimpaired. In stripping it of the monstrosities 
with which our dim views of God's plan have clothed 
it, we have only made it more real. We have brought 
it nearer to men's consciences and to their apprehen- 
sion. We have emphasized their present peril. We 
have called their attention away from a far distant 
lake of fire to a present hell, on the borders of which 
they daily tread, and whose fires of destruction are 
already kindled in their bodies and souls. We have 
warned them of the hell before resurrection as the 
penalty for sin in this life, rather than of the lake of 
fire which awaits the issues of a life to come. We 
have told them that increasing sin must intensify and 
prolong for them this hell, that resurrection can reach 
them only in their own time and order, that it cannot 
exempt men who continue in sin from future peril, 
nor exempt them from a second death, and that their 
lives can be saved from destruction, and purified and 
made eternal, only as they receive Christ, and so re- 
ceive power to become the sons of God. The mass 
of men in Christian lands have generally rejected the 
old creed doctrine of endless torment. Many of them 
have rejected the whole system of faith, of which 
they have been taught to believe this forms a part. 
Others are being deluded with the fiction that the 
death state is not penalty, but extended probation. 
There is imperative need, therefore, that the true doc- 
trine of immediate punishment, as we have found it 
presented in Scripture, should be brought out and set 
before them; that, on the one hand, they may be 



246 The Fire of GocVs Anger. 

deterred from sin by its just and salutary view of the 
wrath to come and of a Judge standing at the door; 
and, on the other, may gain a true view of the face 
of their Father, God, now masked from them by the 
horrid distortions which men have drawn over it, and 
a true view also of the work of the Divine Saviour 
in their behalf, who gave Himself a ransom for all, 
to be testified in due time. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



IS THIS DOCTRINE PRACTICAL? 

We began these discussions with the statement that, 
in the general drifting away from the old belief in eternal 
torment, the church was in great need of a good work- 
ing doctrine of future punishment. By this we mean 
one that is true to Scripture, that commends itself to 
every man's conscience in the sight of God, and one that 
she can fearlessly and honestly proclaim. Such an one, 
we believe, is that to which these studies have conducted 
us. It makes a strong and rational appeal to the fears 
and to the consciences of men. At the same time it 
easily adjusts itself to all that we have learned of the na- 
ture of man, and of the character and purposes of God. 

I. This doctrine appeals to the fears of men. It 
enables us to hold before them, in strict fidelity to the 
words of Jesus, the great danger to which they are ex- 
posed in the loss and utter bankruptcy of that estate in 
life with which they are now endowed. It makes death 
to be a deeper and more prolonged destruction than the 
dissolution of the body, reaching to a possible destruc- 
tion of the soul in hell. It warns them that this peril is 
impending and not remote, that the tokens of it are now 
apparent in the debasement and ruin wrought in this 
world in the bodies and souls of men. It warns them 
that this ruin will be complete in death, and that no man 
can survive this crisis, and save his soul alive, who does 
not submit to the Lord Jesus Christ as His only Saviour 
from sin and death. Hell in this view is not a figure of 

247 



248 The Fire of God's Anger. 

speech, but a veritable abyss of destruction, into which 
wicked men must be cast, not only by the sentence of 
the divine Judge, but by the law of nature and of life. 
And this doom does not await the issue of a remote trial 
at a distant judgment day. It is immediate. He, there- 
fore, who would save his life, or save himself and not be 
cast away — as St, Luke phrases it (ix. 25), must fly for 
refuge to the hope set before him in the gospel. Here 
then is just the doctrine of hell our preachers need, who 
would be faithful to the Master's words. 

2. It appeals to the consciences of men, in that it 
reveals this wages of sin to be the result of wrong-doing, 
and that it is only reached through a disregard of the 
warnings of natural law, the monitions of conscience, 
and by stemming the tide of those gracious and redemp- 
tive influences with which God is ever seeking to draw 
the sinner to himself. 

3. It is also a reasonable and scientific view of man's 
future. It is not rational to suppose that any organized 
form of life can escape destruction which is not in per- 
fect connection with the source of its life, and which con- 
tains within itself the principle of lawlessness. Such a 
principle is sin (1 John iii. 4). Science teaches that all 
imperfect forms of life are cast into the furnace of nature's 
consuming forces which burn with an eternal fire. And 
science also holds forth a hope of resurrection in show- 
ing how even these unworthy and cast-off forms are 
wrought over again in this alembic of fire. 

4. This doctrine appeals to the hopes and highest 
aspirations of men, in that it shows how they may escape 
this impending loss of life and of self. It gives the 



Is this Doctrine Practical? 249 

promise of the conservation of all the true elements of 
being through the crisis of death, and of a life emanci- 
pated, purified, ennobled, and transfigured into the like- 
ness of the glorified manhood of the Lord on the other 
side of death. 

5. It shows how in this way of life there is no respect 
of persons with God. If any are now called to enter into 
life it is only in that way of self sacrifice which surrenders 
the old man of sin to destruction in His consuming fire. 
For it is not God out of Christ, as the passage is con- 
stantly misquoted and misapplied, but God in Christ, 
Our God, who is a consuming fire. Every one must be 
salted with .fire (Mark ix. 43-49). It is not from judg- 
ment for sin, but through judgment that he saves. The 
whole doctrine of atonement and of the forgiveness of 
sins needs to be re-examined in the light of this great 
principle. The cross is not God's arrangement by which 
any sinner may go scot-free from deserved penalty. It 
is not a device by which a special class can slip through. 
It is not a bargain by which a certain number of souls 
have been bought off from eternal torments. It is God's 
way of condemning sin in the flesh, and of bringing the 
old man in us to the altar of sacrifice to be consumed by 
the fire. We are saved, not by escaping the fire of His 
anger against our sins, but by submitting to it. The 
Christian accepts the judgment against himself, rendered 
at the cross, and his death to sin becomes the way of 
life. The unbeliever refuses to submit himself to the 
righteousness of God, and must be overwhelmed in the 
fire that goeth before Him to burn up all His enemies. 
But the principle of His administration toward both 



250 The Fire of God's Anger. 

classes is the same. Towards all that is evil in both He 
is a consuming fire. And without holiness no man shall 
see the Lord. 

6. While this doctrine proclaims the terrors of the 
Lord, it enables us at the same time to hold fast to all 
the testimonies of His grace. It harmonizes the two 
parallel lines of Scripture teaching concerning judgment 
and redemption, and shows that God's terrible acts of 
righteousness are not inconsistent with his essential na- 
ture, Love. It shows that what He is in this world He 
will be in all worlds. His attitude toward sinful man is 
not changed by death. His judgments are never vin- 
dictive. Neither the law, nor the grace, of His adminis- 
tration is ever set aside. A resurrection awaits the 
sinner out of the pit of destruction into which his sins 
have cast him, as the result of the ransom paid for all. 
Redeeming mercy does not forsake him. And yet judg- 
ment for his sins must first be satisfied. It must be in- 
tensified and prolonged, according to his desert of few or 
many stripes. These terms " few " and " many," how- 
ever, imply a limit. The Lord does not say the greater 
sinner shall be forever beaten with heavier stripes, but 
with more in number, and the lesser sinner with less. 
But the stripes, in either case, are not immeasurable. 
There is an end to both. From the nature of the case, 
as well as from the teaching of Scripture, we know 
that all are not freed together. And the law of all 
life must still prevail to make even resurrected life a 
burdened and a crippled one, if it be not freed from sin. 
There is a resurrection of judgment. To every seed his 
own body. This doctrine, therefore, does not encourage 



Is this Doctrine Practical? 251 

the sinner to take low or loose views of the requirements 
of God's law, or of the abatement of its claims. It does 
not open any other door than the strait and narrow one 
which leadeth unto life. Resurrection opens no other 
door. It re-opens to him indeed the door of hope, but 
then, as well as now, any other way than the right way 
will end in another death and a lake of fire. Here then 
is a doctrine of ceaseless punishment for the sinner so 
long as he remains a sinner, and of eternal death at the 
end, if he will not humble himself under the mighty 
hand of God ; — but a doctrine also of recovering grace 
that is not foiled by death, that changes not from age to 
age, that meets and baffles man's enemies who have 
dragged him down to death, by new displays of grace 
and power, and new conquests over death and him that 
hath the power of it, that is, the devil. Both these sides 
of truth, and both these aspects of the character and 
purposes of God are necessary to save us from wrong 
notions of His ways, and from a distorted conception of 
Him, in the knowledge of whom standeth our eternal 
life. What the world is aweary for, and what the 
Church is languishing for, is a right knowledge of God. 
No temporary success, or hold on men through their 
fears, can begin to compensate for the immense damage 
that must come to them through false or monstrous 
ideas of God. These underlie everything in religious 
and moral life. Men become like the God they worship. 
No greater service, therefore, can be rendered them than 
one which helps to remove the vail that obscures His 
face, and shows them that He whom they thought of as 
a tyrant or a pitiless judge, is the Father, whose pity for 



252 The Fire of God's Anger. 

His offspring, and whose gracious purposes, are not cir- 
cumscribed by this little span of human life, but that He 
is the same just and loving God, yesterday, to-day, and 
forever. 

Such is the doctrine the Church needs to give her 
success, because it is the true doctrine and the full 
gospel. The world can never be frightened by fears to 
Christ, nor won by a mutilated gospel. Catholic Chris- 
tianity has not been able to hold more than half the 
lands once won. Protestant Christianity, still more 
severe in its dogmas about the future, discarding any 
relief, such as purgatory gave in the older system, has 
waned in all the lands of the Reformation. It is 
scarcely holding its own in this most favored land; 
for numbers are sometimes a deceptive standard. It 
makes much of its missionary zeal and conquests. 
But it is estimated that the addition to the ranks of 
Pagans and Mahometans by natural increase are fifty 
times as great as the converts from among them to 
Christianity. The Church has been seeking to evangel- 
ize these millions with a gospel that largely conceals 
the grace of God, that draws a dark veil over His 
face, and denies that it is glad tidings of great joy to 
all people. Her success either at home or abroad fur- 
nishes no argument against the trial of some new and 
more merciful view. The world has not been won, and 
cannot be, in any way that conceals from men the 
true knowledge of God. The Holy Spirit will not 
honor testimony that robs the mission of the Lord 
Christ of half its grace and glory. Nor can an appeal 
to men's fears avail which so exaggerates its terrors 



Is this Doctrine Practical? 253 

that the very men who utter it recoil from it, while 
their hearers are only dazed and stunned into stolidity 
or unbelief. We want a rational doctrine of hell, as 
well as a full gospel proclamation of Him who holds 
its keys, and whose resurrection shed down its light 
of hope among the " spirits in prison," the myriads of 
earth's dead who have been carried away captive into 
its dark domain. And we need to arouse men, not 
only by lhe hope of individual salvation, — a hope not 
free from selfishnesss — but by the high aim of fellow- 
ship with Christ in present sacrifice, that so, baptized 
for the dead, they may be fitted to take part with 
Him in those ever- widening conquests by which He 
shall recover from the land of the enemy the captive 
multitudes of our race for whom His soul travailed 
unto death. The anxious cry of the heathen, a What 
of our ancestors?" when they first hear the gospel, 
would find here its satisfying answer. 



APPENDIX A. 



THE TIME OF RESURRECTION. 

Upon this point a variety of opinions prevail among 
Christians. 

1. The traditional opinion is that the countless multi- 
tudes who have lived upon the earth are all to be raised 
together, good and bad, at the last day. 

2. The extreme opposite doctrine is that of Sweden- 
borg, which has also its adherents in various evangelical 
churches. It is that, upon the death of the material body, 
man emerges into a spiritual world in a spiritual body. 
Death and resurrection are two parts of but one process. 

3. Many advocates of conditional immortality hold 
that all men, even the saints, remain unconscious in 
death until the resurrection, which they believe will occur 
at a great crisis of the future — the coming of the Lord. 
They believe, however, in the first resurrection of the 
saints, and that, after a long interval, the wicked will be 
raised and punished by being consigned to extinction in 
the lake of fire, which is the second death. 

4. Others, who reject the idea of the unconscious sleep 
of the soul — especially in the case of the saved — before 
resurrection, still hold to the idea that it is eclectic and 
progressive. " Every man in his own order." 

As between the old traditional opinion that resurrec- 
tion is simultaneous, and this view that it is progressive, 
there can be no doubt that the latter is taught in Scrip- 
ture. The passage which seems most to favor the view 
that all classes are raised together is St, John v. 28, 29. 

254 



The Time of Restirrection. 255 

But the "hour" of vs. 25 is so manifestly a period of long 
continuance that we are not only justified, but obliged to 
regard the hour of universal resurrection (vs. 29) as a pro- 
longed administration of the Son of Man, during which 
He shall recover all the captives in the realms of death. 
And various other passages teach plainly that there is 
"a first resurrection" (Rev. xx. 5, 6); that there is a 
chosen company first gathered from the harvest fields ot 
death (Phil. iii. 11), u out from among the dead." 
" They that are Christ's at his coming." 

The first view, which we have classed as Sweden- 
borgian, makes the Scripture promise of anastasis, or 
resurrection, to be simply the promise of a future 
life. And that man enters upon this life immediately 
upon death is affirmed from such Scriptures as 
our Lord's conversation with the Sadducees (Luke 
xx. 26-38), in which He establishes the fact of 
resurrection by declaring that God's words to Moses 
about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob imply that these 
patriarchs were still living, and, therefore, raised out 
of death. The appearance of Moses and Elijah, with 
Jesus, on the Mount is also appealed to. Also His 
words to the dying thief, " To-day shalt thou be 
with me in Paradise." Paul's words in 2 Cor. v, also 
seem to imply that immediately upon his putting off of 
this earthly tabernacle, he would find a " heavenly house " 
awaiting him in which he would be at home with the 
Lord. Other of his writings, however, assume that dur- 
ing the interval preceding the Lord's manifestation from 
heaven the saints would be asleep (1 Cor. xv. 5 1 ; 1 Thess. 
iv. 13-15), out of which they v/ould be aroused by the 



256 The Fire of God\ Anger. 

trumpet-sound of some signal triumph over the empire 
of death. 

The truth, we believe, lies between these two views. 
The Swedenborgian view is defective, 

1. In the fact that it does not give proper weight 
to the fact of death as the wages of sin, and of that 
death-state which lies beyond the grave, — the sheol and 
hell of Scripture. It makes death to be simply the loss 
of well-being, and strips of its proper meaning the sen- 
tence, " The soul that sinneth it shall die." 

2. It does not appreciate the fact that man is more 
than "a spiritual being." He holds relation to this 
created system. He is destined to unfettered dominion 
over it. For this purpose his body is to be redeemed 
and the whole creation to be delivered into the liberty 
of his glory (Rom. viii. 19-21). While, therefore, it is 
freely conceded that saved men enter upon a future life 
at once upon their departure out of this world, and that 
the words of Jesus that such " never die " require this, 
we must also hold that they do not attain the complete 
glory of the resurrection state, nor enter upon its full 
activities, until this emancipation of the creature. The 
full redemption of man requires his re-investure with a 
body suited to a redeemed creation. Such a cosmical 
change seems plainly set forth in Scripture. Its closing 
pages are gilded with the glory of it. 

Both sides of the truth concerning man's future life 
may be reconciled by bearing in mind what we have 
learned of his nature as body, soul, and spirit. We have 
seen that the "soul " is virtually an intermediate embodi- 
ment of the spirit, that it survives the death of the carnal 



The Time of Resurrection. 257 

body, that the righteous man saves his soul alive 
through this crisis, and is therefore never completely 
disembodied or " unclothed," while the soul of the 
wicked may be destroyed in hell. All that Scripture 
hints at, therefore, concerning the continued and blessed 
life of the righteous after death, is conserved by this 
view of the salvation of his soul. This answers all the 
requirements of an intermediate ethereal body. While 
all that it suggests concerning a future investiture of the 
saints with a glorified humanity, crowned on the summit 
of creation as its head and lord, is provided for by this 
view of a completed resurrection, when all things shall be 
made new. And all that it teaches concerning the death 
of the wicked, their ejection out of the sphere of man's 
life and heritage, and their inferior and long-delayed 
recovery through resurrection, is held fast to. While its 
doctrine of resurrection as eclectic and progressive, cor- 
responds with that doctrine of Science which requires 
that cosmical changes, and transformations in created 
life, be viewed as proceeding by stages, and each in their 
own order. It can reach no one until he is prepared for 
it, and it can lift no one above that plane of being for 
which he is prepared. Scripture, however, shows that a 
blessed principle has been incorporated into humanity, 
by which those who reach the highest plane are made 
capable of reaching down a helping hand to those who 
are struggling on the arenas below. Saved themselves, 
they find their highest happiness in becoming saviours of 
others. 

As to the time, then, of the resurrection of the good, 
we would say that they enter upon the future life at 
17 



258 The Fire of God's Anger. 

once, and in this sense are raised out of death, their 
souls surviving this crisis. But they do not take on that 
form of glorified manhood, which is the heir of all 
things, until all things are ready for their manifestation 
as the sons of God. As to the wicked, while their souls 
in suffering survive the death of the body, yet the light 
of life in them must vanish away. And resurrection 
cannot reach them until after their death-sentence has 
been exhausted. Their release seems to be connected 
with, and dependent upon, certain future triumphs over 
the empire of death and hell, and certain changes in the 
present natural order, which open the way for gracious 
intervention in their behalf by that royal priesthood of 
the future of which Christ is the head. We may not 
venture to say what anticipations or preparations for 
these deliverances may now be going on in the unseen 
world. 



APPENDIX B. 



THE LAW OF THE FIRST-BORN. 

Much light upon the doctrines of retribution and re- 
demption may yet come to us by the careful study from 
Scripture of the law of the first-born. Theology has 
given prominence to the individual relations which men 
hold to God and to one another, to the neglect of the 
organic relations they sustain to Him as members of one 
race and as united in families. In the economy of God 
and of nature there is a race life, a race redemption, and 
a race accountability. We hear nowadays much about 
the law of heredity. This law shows how the ancestral 
life lives in the descendant, how it moulds form and fea- 
ture, and weaves itself into nerve-fibre and brain-tissue, 
and into the finer fabric of the soul. The blood that 
flows in the veins of each living man has been distilled 
in the veins of many generations behind him. Each 
man has to fight over again the battles with temptation 
in which his fathers fought. He inherits the vices of his 
lineage, its weaknesses and passions. Perhaps, as the 
penalties he incurs are those of his race, the victories he 
wins may also be won for them. It was an instinct of 
the Jewish family to look for a saviour in its own line. 

The law of heredity thus connects itself with the law of 
penalty, the law of vicarious sacrifice, and the law of re- 
demption. All this comes out in the Scripture teaching 
concerning the law of the first-born. It views the first- 
born as the eminent depositary and representative of 
race and family life, weighted with its penalties, incurring 

259 



260 The Fire of God's Anger. 

its responsibilities, and charged with the privilege and 
duty of its redemption. 

I. The penalty of sin is corruption of life and con- 
sequent death. Cain was not the first to die of Adam's 
seed, but he was the most deeply infected with the taint 
which had come into the race-life. Eve fondly hoped 
that he would prove to be the promised deliverer. She 
said, " I have gotten a man from the Lord." But he 
proved to be a murderer. He was eminently, indeed, 
the man of nature. i( Howbeit, that which is first is 
natural." He was the first to cultivate and subdue the 
earth, the first city-builder, the ancestor of the first great 
leaders in the world's civilization, of those who first 
taught men the mechanic arts and the fine arts. But he 
was also the first man of pride, and greed, and envy. 
And the way of Cain proved to be, to that antediluvian 
world, the way of death. Subsequent examples of first- 
born sons who were a disappointment, and whose emin- 
ence was along this line of natural evil which ends in 
death, are numerous. Especially is this fact apparent in 
the line of the chosen people. Ishmael was Abraham's 
first-born a after the flesh." But he was set aside in favor 
of Isaac " born after the Spirit." Esau was hated and 
Jacob loved. Reuben defiled his father's bed, and Judah 
was set above him. " Er, Judah's first born, was wicked 
in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord slew him." (Gen. 
xxxviii. 7). Ephraim was placed before Manasseh. Na- 
dab, Aaron's first-born, offered strange fire and died be- 
fore the Lord. Korah, the leader of the rebellion against 
Moses and Aaron, was a first-born son. Not to multi- 
ply instances, the fact is apparent from Scripture that 



The Law of the First-Born. 261 

the first-born were viewed as specially inheritors of the 
curse that had come upon the race, and therefore fore- 
most in incurring the penalty of sin which is death. The 
first-born of every household in the land of Egypt were 
stricken down by the angel of death in a single night. 
And even the first-born of Israel were regarded as " de- 
voted to death," and as needing to be redeemed from it. 
(Ex. xiii. 15; Numbers viii. 16, 17). The worshippers 
of Moloch, who offered their first-born, u the fruit of the 
body for the sin of the soul" did so through a perverted 
recognition of this law of the race-life, that the " sons of 
their strength," were under a special obligation to pay 
down the wages of its sin, which is death. They knew 
nothing, however, of God's purposes of redemption. 
These He taught to Israel. The forfeited lives of their first- 
born were redeemed by the offered lives of the lambs 
slain at the passover. Thus were the first-born viewed 
as first-bearers of the penalty. 

2. But they had also special privileges and responsi- 
bilities. They were the natural elders and princes of the 
people. They were the first in the line of inheritance. 
They received a double portion (Deut. xx. 7). And they 
were also priests. God says of Israel, whom He sancti- 
fied unto Himself as a " kingdom of priests," (Ex. xix.6), 
a Israel is my son, my first-born" (iv. 22). The first-born 
of that nation, however, might be redeemed from the 
obligations of the priestly office. The tribe of Levi was 
set apart in lieu of all the first-born. And the number 
of them in excess of the males of that tribe were redeem- 
ed by a money payment of five shekels apiece (Numbers 
Hi. 44-50- 



262 The Fire of God's Anger. 

3. A duty of vicarious sacrifice for the family was put 
upon the first-born. Their devotion to death seemed 
measurably to answer the claim of death upon the rest 
of the household, and to bring them temporary and typi- 
cal exemption. The death of Egypt's first-born sufficed 
to the sparing of the rest. And their death was deliver- 
ance to Israel (Ex.~xii. 27). The rod with which the 
Lord punished David for his sin smote first Amnon, his 
first-born. And Absalom, the first-born of another wife, 
after bringing untold shame and sorrow on his father, 
met an untimely death. Bathsheba's first-born son must 
die, but a younger son, Solomon, came to the throne. 
The first-born were thus appointed to bear the brunt of 
the family curse to the partial relief of the rest. But it 
was as priests, rather than victims, that their standing 
for the family was most apparent. We have seen, how- 
ever, that they might be redeemed from the obligation to 
devote themselves to priestly functions. And this leads 
us to observe, 

4. That these prerogatives and functions of the natural 
first-born could not be worthily discharged by them, and 
so God has selected and qualified a spiritual seed, to take 
the place of the first-born in a higher order of life than 
the natural, and who become, therefore, a royal priest- 
hood forever. This was foreshown all along the line of 
human history. Cain and his offering were rejected. 
Abel became the true priest, offering unto God a more 
acceptable sacrifice. Ishmael, born after the flesh, was 
cast out and Isaac, " born after the Spirit," became the 
heir and channel of blessing. David inherits before 
Eliab, and Solomon comes into the place of Amnon. The 



The Law of the First- Born. 263 

same truth was taught in the consecration of a special 
tribe to serve as priests in place of the first-born of all 
Israel. This priestly class must come into the special 
place of self-devotion. Their natural rights must be sur- 
rendered in service and sacrifice. They had no inherit- 
ance among their brethren. The Old Testament economy, 
however, could not develop in its completeness this 
spiritual seed. It only prepared the way for the coming 
of Him who was the true First-Born of the sons of men, 
both in the order of creation and redemption (Col. i. 
15-20). The only begotten Son of God, He is also pre- 
eminently the Son of man, summing up in Himself all 
man's prerogatives, assuming all his responsibilities, 
bearing all his curse, devoted to service, to sacrifice and 
to death, and now standing before God in the power of 
an endless life, our High Priest forever after the order of 
Melchizedec. But He is also the Head of a body, a 
spiritual seed chosen from mankind, who are a church 
of the first-born, a royal priesthood, the first fruits of 
God's creatures. They, under Him, as members of His 
body, constitute that anointed seed of the human race 
who are called into the place of the first-born, with its 
dignities, its responsibilities, and its duties. It is by the 
offering of themselves in sacrifice to God that they bring 
salvation to their brethren (2 Cor. iv. 10-12). Jesus, 
the Head, so offered Himself for us, and, as the Head of 
humanity, for the sins of the whole world. But we are 
called to be sharers in His sacrifice, to yield up our old 
natural manhood to death, to fill up that which is behind 
in His afflictions for His body's sake, the church (Col i. 
24; Phil. iii. 10), to lay down our lives for the brethren, 



264 The Fire of God's Anger. 

to have great heaviness and sorrow of heart for our breth- 
ren and kinsmen according to the flesh who yet know 
not Him, (Rom. ix. 2, 3), and to be sharers in that love 
for the world that gave Him to be the propitiation for its 
sins (1 Jno. iv. 8-10). This is that spiritual seed, Abra- 
ham's true children by faith, in whom all the families of 
the earth are to be blessed. But they can become a 
blessing only as the Christ-nature is formed in them, 
leading them to sacrifice and service, to take upon their 
own hearts the sins, the woes and burdens of their breth- 
ren, to stand for them in the place of death, and so to 
transmit to others the power of that redemption which 
Christ has brought to them, and of which He is the only 
source to the world. They thus fulfil the first-born's duty 
of penalty, of sacrifice, and of redemption. Jesus, as the 
First-Born of humanity, did this for the race. But the 
race is to be saved by generations, by families and kind- 
reds. These terms, as constantly used in Scripture, show 
how we are bound together by organic ties. The pious 
Jew was not taught to expect his personal salvation 
apart from that of his own people. Race-life, lines of 
lineage, corporate communities bound together by ties of 
kindred and sharing in a common ancestral life, seem to 
be embraced in the sweep of this redemption. The taint 
of evil goes down to the third and fourth generation. 
The second commandment teaches this. After that the 
remedial power in the principle of life would seem to be 
able to neutralize or eliminate the evil. The good effects 
of piety and virtue go down, however, to thousands of 
generations. Such is the law of heredity. And such 
the priestly efficacy for good to coming generations in 



The Law of the First- Born, 265 

those who rise above the level and the downward tenden- 
cies of the life of the race, and of their ancestral life. 
They lift up those who are to come after, and especially 
those of their own blood. The channels of their family 
life become purified. In this domain, physical and moral 
transformations proceed together. 

It is easy enough to perceive and confess this in re- 
spect to those who come after us. But how about those 
who have gone before, the brethren of our lineage who 
have fallen in the battle of life, who are now lying maim- 
ed and captive in the land of the enemy. What reference 
to them is there in the Scripture promises " All genera- 
tions shall call Him blessed? 1 ' Will God's faithfulness 
be made known to the generations past, as well as to 
come ? Psalm lxxxix may teach us something upon this 
point. After proclaiming God's faithfulness in the open- 
ing verses the writer seems to raise this very question in 
the closing verses. He asks, is it possible that death 
has defeated all these promises, and made void these sure 
mercies of David to the generations who have gone 
down to death ? 

" For what vanity hast Thou created all the children of men ! 
What man is he that shall live and not see death, that shall deliver 
his soul from the power of Sheol ? Lord, where are thy former 
mercies which Thou swarest unto David in thy faithfulness ? Re- 
member, Lord, the reproach of thy servants : How I do bear in my 
bosom the reproach of all the many peoples ; wherewith thine ene- 
mies have reproached, O, Lord, wherewith they have reproached 
the footsteps of thine anointed." 

This is but one of many Scriptures which imply that 
death has broken God's covenant and made void His 
promises, unless He shall prove Himself victorious over 



266 The Fire of God's Anger. 

death, and in spite of it, find a way to bless the genera- 
tions who have gone down to Sheol. But this is the very- 
thing He sent His Christ to do. As the First-Born of 
Jehovah, as well as of the race (vs. 27), He was raised 
from the dead to perform for us the near kinsman's part, 
to raise up the name of the dead upon their inheritance, 
to gather under a new headship the generations of men, 
to set the scattered and solitary ones in families, to bridge 
the chasm between the dead and the living, and to prove 
Himself the Lord of both. He is eminently the Priest 
upon His throne for all mankind. But under Him, His 
brethren, who are also a kingdom of priests, and who 
are the first to share His triumph over death, must hold 
a special relation in this work to the generations and 
families from which they sprang. The first in the line 
of their ancestral life to rise into the glory and strength 
of the eternal life, they must especially be helpers of 
their brethren and kinsmen according to the flesh. These 
organic ties which hold men together as one in race, and 
lineage, and family are made too much of in Scripture for 
us to deny that they will have no place in the unfolding 
of God's redemptive plan. That plan provides for the 
salvation of a chosen seed out of all kindreds and tongues, 
a first fruits unto God and the Lamb, who fulfil in blessed 
completeness the office of first-born to their brethren. 
Saved themselves, they become saviours of others. Paul, 
as one born before the time, became a first-born priest 
toward a saved remnant of his brethren. This remnant, 
according to the election of grace, became the first fruits 
of all Israel (Rom. xi). For if the first fruit be holy, the 
lump is also holy. First-born from the dead imply later 



The Law of the First-Born. 267 

born. The first-hopers inChrist are the first-ordained vessels 
of His grace in the dispensation for the gathering together 
in one all things in heaven and on earth (Eph. i. 10-12). 

We shall not be far out of the way, therefore, if we con- 
clude that the " kings and priests" of God's kingdom are 
to be occupied in saving ministries, which shall prove 
them to be indeed brothers born for adversity to their 
captive brethren, who, for their sins, have gone down as 
prisoners in the pit, who have lost their heritage of life 
and blessing, and who, on earth, were ignorant and out 
of the way because no man cared for their souls, or told 
them the way of life. 

And what motives from this point of view open up to 
us for faith in, and devotion to, the Lord Jesus Christ, 
beyond the selfish one of individual salvation. We are 
called into fellowship with Christ in His sufferings, being 
made conformable unto His death, not only that we may 
attain unto the resurrection from among the dead, but 
that, like Him, we may help others to attain it. If we 
fight this battle of life through to victory for ourselves, 
we shall help others of our kind in the struggle. We 
become princes and priests to our own kindred in this 
larger field of God's working to bless all the kindreds of 
the earth. And what new power would such a gospel 
carry with it to the heathen. It would mean to the China- 
man, for example, taught to reverence his ancestors, that 
God was calling him into fellowship with His Son, that, 
as sharing in his sacrifice and service he would be quali- 
fied to bring this divine healing and salvation within the 
reach ot his ancestors who had died without the sight 
So might he be baptized for the dead. Faith on the Lord 



268 The Fife cf God's Anger. 

Jesus Christ would thus acquire that larger meaning 
given to it in the first sermons of the apostles, where 
faith for ourselves as individuals is merged into a broad 
faith in Him as a Messiah for the race, anointed to re- 
store all things and to be the Judge, in the large Old 
Testament conception of that office, of both the living 
and the dead. And the eternal life to which we are in- 
vited, and which stretches out before us in boundless 
prospect, would be seen to be no life of selfish ease and 
indolent enjoyment, but a life filled up with royal and 
priestly ministrations which shall show forth unto the ages 
to come the manifold wisdom of God, and bring Him glory 
by the church unto all generations, world without end. 

A full view of this whole subject requires us, however, 
to note that there was such a thing as " a cutting off from 
among his people/' repeatedly spoken of in the old Testa- 
ment (Ex. xii. 15, 19; Lev. xvii. 4, 9; xx. 3, etc.). No 
encouragement is given, by this principle of family priest- 
hood, to men to go on in sin in the hope of such future 
intervention in their behalf. For sin must surely be 
punished under the righteous government of God, and 
men may place themselves outside of, and beyond the 
reach of those remedial agencies which God has pro- 
vided, and through which His forgiving grace follows 
men even to seventy times and seven. All we are assur- 
ed of is that death cannot forever interrupt all these lines 
of God's gracious working. But, beyond that gracious 
intervention which has secured for all a recovery from 
death, there lies the possible peril of a final cutting off 
by the second death, beyond which God has not chosen 
to lift the veil. 



INDEX. 



A Divided Church an imperfect 

witness 2 

Ages 130 

Aionion 113, 126, 129. 189 

Agents of God's judgments, 72, 99, 

107, 156. 
Alger, quotations from ...78, 81, 82 

Andover Review 44 

Angels, connected with the 

powers of Nature, 38, 39, 99, 

107, 156. 

Apocrypal Opinions 78 

Assyria 58 

Babylon 55 

Babylon — type of world-reli- 
gion 68 

Baptized for the Dead 198, 267 

Baptism of Fire 89 

Beast and False Prophet 222 

Blessing for the Dead. ..66, 193, 265 
Body, Soul and Spirit, 101, 128, 141, 

242, 257. 
Book of Life 161, 166, 168, 216 

Captivity Captive 64 

Christ, appearing of, 107, 121, 126, 

224. 

Christ, the Deliverer 124 

Christ, the glorified Man, 110, 113, 

120, 144. 
Christ, judge of the living and 

dead 113, 151, 154, 172, 268 

Christ, the only Saviour 245, 247 

Christ, the Prince of Life 114 

Christ, the perfect Man ,...107 

Christian Consciousness... ..134, 135 

Christian Liberty 1 

Church, a chosen seed, 160, 182, 194, 

233. 
Church, a first born company, 159, 

22b, *63, 266. 



Church, a first fruits 159, 194 

Church, a priestly company, 159, 
193, 258, 262. 



Day of Judgment 139, 207, 209 

Day of the Lord 209, 218 

Dead the, defined as Captives, 27, 

33, 45, 47, 49, 53, 55,^59, 233. 

Death, Egypt a type of 45 

Death, idea of 27 

Death, the enemy of God and 

man 18 

Death, the penalty of sin, 32, 98, 

100, 101, 121, 141, 186, 187, 201, 

241,260. 

Death, to be destroyed 20 

Devil and his angels. ..108, 130, 210 
Devil has the power of death.. .109 

%%?' i -"37,140,143 

Destruction, qua homo, 101, 180, 187, 
201, 242. 

Disciples, law of life for 96 

Diseases, due to satanic power.,109 

Dives and Lazarus 98, 138, 236 

Doctrine of the Magi 77, 83 

Doctrine of the Pharisees 82, 141 

Dragon, the 52 

Disembodiment, penal, 143, 192, 242 



Egypt, type of Sheol, 45, 47, 53, 

56, 58. 

Election 194 

Endless Punishment, not taught 

in the Old Testament 5, 77 

Eternal Fire 77, 122, 126, 212 

Eternal Fire, a fact of Science, 104, 

224. 
Eternal Fire, a servant of God, 114 

u Eternal Hope " 9, 136 

Eternal Life 106, 170, 191, 268 



275 



276 



Index. 



Eternal Life, its mastery 114 

Eternal Torment, unscriptural,178, 

188,196,198,200,213,228. 
Evolution .. 106, 243 



Farrar, Archdeacon 9, 81 

Fire 14, 17 

Fire, the old man must be con- 
signed to 91 

First Resurrection 159 

Forgiveness of Sins 249 

Gehenna 80, 81, 82, 90, 94, 112 

Gentiles, God's dealings with, 25, 

195. 
Gentiles, promised deliverance 

through resurrection, 66, 67, 

75. 

God, our Redeemer 18, 62 

God, character of, 8, 133, 134, 171, 

244, 250. 
God, a consuming fire, 35, 42, 71, 

90. 

God revealed in nature 104 

God, right knowledge of. 251 



Hades 26, 45, 97, 233 

Heaven and Earth 165, 210 

Hell .121, 173, 206, 236 

Hell, first mention of 13 

Hell, not a figure of speech 248 

Hodge, Dr. A. A., quotation 

from 127 

Human race, bound by organic 

ties 264 



Idolatry.... 37,38 

Intermediate state, for the 

wicked, penal 245 

Israel, lost tribes of , 63 

Israel, unregenerate, to be re- 
deemed through resurrec- 
tion 62 



Jewish Liturgy 22 

Jewish opinion 77, 141, 178 

Josephus, quotations from. .83, 141 
Judgment, a present fact, 120, 125, 
170. 



Judgment before resurrection, 92, 

102, 118, 128, 140, 162, 173, 189, 

203, 206, 208, 236. 
Judgment, broad view of, 146, 152, 

157, 164. 

Judgment, disciplinary 30, 36 

Judgment, not a mere assize, 152, 

168. 
Judgment, powers of Nature 

the agents of. 74, 99, 107 

Kingsley, Charles 78 

Kolasis, meaning of 131 

Lake of Fire 169, 212, 224 

Law of heredity 168, 259, 264 

Law of the first born 259 

Life, development of 105, 243 

Life, remedial power of 168, 264 

Man, an embodied image of 

God 98 

Man, destiny of 142, 241 

Man, his punishment 98, 242 

Man, not inherently immortal, 201, 
240. 

Man, tripartite nature of 101 

" Mercy and Judgment," 9, 81 

Millenarianism 63 

Missions, basis of 252, 267 

Mystery of Evil 15, 39 

" Natural Law in the Spiritual 

world," . 243 

Nature, constitution of 105 

Nature, forces of, execute the 

divine judgments 107, 156, 

Nature, Satan's power in, to be 

overthrown 40, 41, 210 

Nature, to be renewed 71, 109 

Nature, viewed as sharing in 

man's sin 13,36, 39, 42, 210 



Old Testament, Eternal torment 

not a doctrine of, 7, 22, 75, 133, 

134. 
Old Testament, low views of its 

Inspiration .., 43 

Old Testament, resurrection 

taught in 43, 54, 122 



Index. 



277 



Old Testament, summary of, 87, 

235, 239. 
Outcasts 53, 65 

Phelps, Prof. Austin 178 

Plumptree, Dean 83 

Prince of this World 14, 19, 40 

Punishment of Sin 98 

Punishment inevitable 25, 110 

Punishment, Old Testament 

idea of. 28 

Pusey, Dr 9, 80, 81 

Probation closed 161 

Probation for resurrection* 205 

Probation, future 241 

Rabbinical doctrine 78, 81, 141 

Rephaim 27,45, 50 

Restitution 41, 78, 109, 165, 224 

Resurrection eclectic.160, 192, 257 
Resurrection its meaning not 

at once unfolded 238 

Resurrection, not simultaneous, 

160, 166, 254. 
Resurrection of judgment, 69, 138, 
167, 250. 

Resurrection of life 142 

Resurrection Redemptive, 18, 43, 
47, 50, 57, 83, 122, 144, 192, 196, 
211, 244 
Resurrection taught in the Old 

Testament 40, 47, 53 

Resurrection, Time of 254 

Retribution in Apostolic Preach- 
ing , 173,238 

Retribution in St. Paul's Epis- * 

ties 183 

Retribution in the Catholic Epis- 
tles 199 

Retribution in the Revelation... 215 
Retribution, inevitable,231, 240, 245 
Review 230 



Salvation of Infants 148 

Salvation through Judgment, 89, 



Salting with Fire 95 

Satan 15, 19 

Satan bound 225 

Science, teachings of...l05, 243, 248 

Second death 92, 147, 169, 201 

Septuagint 20, 44 

Sermon on the Mount 94 

Sheol 26, 27, 45, 49, 97, 139, 233 

Sodom and Samaria 66, 162 

Song: of Moses 10-23 

Soul, distinct from Spirit, 101, 128, 

256. 

Soul, destructible 101, 247 

Soul, pertains to embodiment, 138, 

139. 

Spirits in Prison 203 

Spiritual discernment needed 2 

St. Paul on Retribution 179,183 

Summary of New Testament 

doctrine 235 

Swedenborgian view 255, 256 



Talmud 81 

Targums 82 

The Gospel 154, 172, 252 

The Lord will judge His people, 17, 
35. 



Unquenchable Fire 71 

Use of term in Old Testament, 72, 

74. 
Use of term in New Testament, 90, 

95, 236. 
Universalism not taught, 131, 157, 

170, 227, 230. 



Way of Cain 260 

Way of Life 249 

Westminster Confession 5, 178 

Wrong Method of Inquiry 8 

Zoroastrian Doctrine ..80 



Index of Scripture Texts, 



GENESIS. 

I., 26-28 ..165 

II., 17 230 

Xri.,3 69,172 

XXII. ,18 229 

XXXVIII, 7 260 



EXODUS. 



IV., 22 

XII, 15-19., 

XII., 27 

XIII., 15 

XIX., 6 



.261 
.268 
.262 
.261 
.261 



LEVITICUS. 

XVII, 7 : 37 

XX., 3 268 

XXVI, 25 32 

XXVI, 41-43 ...17, 30, 147 

NUMBERS. 

III., 44-51 261 

VIII., 16 261 

XVi.,30 162 

DEUTERONOMY. 



IV., 19 

IV., 24 

IX., 3 

XVII., 3.... 

XX., 7 

XXUL, 27.. 

XXVIII 

XXX., 4. 



...38 
...72 
...99 
...38 
.261 
...40 
...26 
..33 



XXXIL, 22-24 99, 123 

XXXLL, 10-23 216,231 

XXXIL, 36 35, 147, 234 

XNXII,, 43 37, 67, 195 



JOB. 



I., 12-19. 



.109 



III., 18 27, 45 

XIV., 10-12 26 

XVII., 16 27, 45 

PSALMS. 

VIII.,2 40,165 

IX., 17 .....27, 137 

XXIL, 27-31.. 148 

XXXVL, 6 36 

XLIL, 9 40 

XLIV.,16 40 

XLIX., 15 45 

LXVIIL, 18-22 47 

LXVIII.,49 109 

LXIX.,1-4 Ill 

LXXVII.,8 136 

LXXIX., 10, 11 46, 234 

LXXXVL, 9 69 

LXXXVIIL, 10-12 45 

LXXXIX., 265 265 

XCIL, 9 29 

XCVI. 152 

XCV1L,3 35,42,72 

CIL, 18-20 46, 234 

CIIL, 7-9 20-32 

CIIL, 20, 21. 38 

CVL, 43-45 30 

CVII, 2 40 

CXVI , 3-9, 15, 16 49 

CXVII 195 

CXLL, 7 23 

CXLIL, 4-7 ...48 

CXLUI.,3-16 48 



PROVERBS. 



XXIX., 1., 



.32 



ISAIAH, 

I, 24-27 42 

II., 18 37 

IV., 4 57,77 

XI 152 

XIII..1-13 217 

XIX.,' 24, 25 , 66 



278 



Index of Scripture Texts. 



279 



XXII., 14 27,82 

XXIV 25 

XXIV., 21^23 37, £9 

XXV., 8 44, 124 

XXV— XXVIII 50 

XXVI., 8 42 

XXVI., 8-21 51 

XXVI., 14 26 

XXVI., 17,18 44, 51 

XXVII., 1 40, 52 

XXVIL, 12 53, 65 

XXX., 18 42 

XXXIII.,14 6 

XXXIV., 1-4 217 

XXXIV., 8-11 73, 221 

XL.,1, 2 31 

XL., 26 : 37 

XLIL, 22 27, 53 

XLIII., 1 53 

XLIX., 5 40 

XLIX., 5-10, 24, 25 55, 234 

LI., 6-14 56 

LI., 39 26 

LVIL, 16 . 33 

LXIII.,9 41 

LXV., 17 41, 165 

LXVI., 14-24 72 

LXVL, 24 6, 95, 133 

JEREMIAH. 

VII, 20 73 

X.,11 37 

X., 24 57 

XVI., 4-16 57, 59 

XVII., 27 6 

XVIII., 4 73 

XXL, 12 6, 73 

XXX., 10-17 58 

XXXL, 10-16 58. 234 

XXXIL, 7, 11, 26 45, 59 

XXXIII.,5 59 

XXXIIL, 44 59 

XLV1IL, 47 66, 75 

XLIX., 6, 39 45, 66 

LAMENTATIONS. 

III., 34 27 

EZEKIEL. 

XVI., 53-63 66, 235 

XX., 47.... 74, 99 



XXXIIL, 22-32 28 

XXXVI 60 

XXXVIL, 11-14 J 28, 61 

XXXVIII 74 

DANIEL. 

VII 119, 163 

VII., 11 148, 223 

XII., 2 : 6, 133 

HOSEA. 

XIII.,9 44 

XIII., 14 44, 62, 124, 234 

XI/.,4 62 

JOEL. 

II 217 

MICAH. 

VII., 7-10 30, 33, 36 

HABBAKUK. 

III., 5 72 

ZEPHANIAH. 

IL, 11 37 

III., 8 74 

III., 14-20 64 

ZECHARIAH. 

IX., 11 33, 64 

X., 8,9 65 

MALACHI. 

IV., 1 74, 88 

MATTHEW. 

n.,17, 18 59 

III., 10-12 88 

V., 29, 30 94 

X.,7, 8 159 

X.,28 94,101 

XL, 23 98 

XIII., 41, 42 107 

XVI., 27, 28 119 



280 



Index of Scripture Texts. 



XVIII.,8,9 94 

XXIII., 15, 33 .95 

XXIV., 29-35 120 

XXIV., 34 237 

XXV., 31-46.. .112, 115, 151, 156, 

189, 237 

MARK. 

III., 29 147 

IX, 43-50 95, 249 

XIII.,3 117 

LUKE. 

L, 46-55 123 

I., 68-79 123 

I., 70, 71 41 

II., 29-32 123 

VI., 27-37 137 

IX., 25 248 

X.,19 109 

Xr., 14-18 ..109 

XII., 47 249 

XIII., 16 109 

XVI., 19-31 98 

XVII., 26-31 208 

XX., 26-38 255 

XXL, 28 120 

JOHN. 

III., 18 138, 147, 161 

III., 36 147, 161 

V., 23 153 

V., 25 163 

V., 28, 29.. .113, 138, 151, 153, 

162, 163, 205, 254 

VIII., 52 114 

X,28 114 

XII., 31 , 14 

XV., 6 199 

XVII.,2 113 

ACTS. 

II., 16-20 217 

III., 19-21 175,180 

III., 21-26 124 

IV., 12 175 

Vll., 51-53 175 

IX., 20, 21 176 

X., 38 109 

X.,42 151 



XIII., 10 176 

XIII. ,41 176 

XIIL, 48 , 19 

XVI., 30 177 

XVII., 31 156, 177 

XXIV., 15 129, 180, 191, 244 

XXVI., 6 43 

XXVIII., 23-38 177 

ROMANS. 

L, 19 , .185 

L, 32 186 

II., 5 185 

II., 6-10 185 

II., 12 186 

III., 12-19 161 

V., 12-20..., 122,191 

VI., 23 186 

VII., 9, 13, 24 187 

VIIL, 19-21. ..67, 69, 109, 130, 

211, 256 

VIIL, 29 194 

IX., 22 187 

XI 195, 266 

XIV., 11 185 

XIV., 9 151, 153, 185 

XV., 8, 9 124, 195 

XV., 10 20 

XVI., 26 129 

IX., 2, 3 264 

I. CORINTHIANS. 

I., 18 187 

III., 13-17 199, 216 

V., 5 186, 199, 216 

VIIL, 2 2 

X,9, 10 187 

XL, 30-32 166 

XV., 18 187 

XV., 22 122, 164, 19:3 

XV., 23 159 

XV., 32 187 

XV., 40 143 

XV., 51 *55 

XV., 55 , 4± 

II. CORINTHIANS. 

II., 15 187 

IV ,10-12 263 

V., 1 .142, 255 

V., 10... 144,167,185 

VI., 9, 10 190 



Index of Scripture Texts. 



281 






GALATIANS. 

VL, 7, 8 91, 145 

EPHESIANS. 

I., 4, 5, 11 194 

I , 10 195, 267 

I., 12-14 194 

I, 20-23 118 

II., 2 109 

III., 8-10 195 

III., 15 * 195 

VL, 10, 20 217 

VL, 12 39, 109 

PHILLIPIANS. 

II., 10. 196 

III., 10 263 

III., 11 159, 192 

III., 19 187 

III., 21 143 

COLOSSIANS. 

I., 14 14, 120 

I, 15-20 263 

I., 16-18 133 

I., 24 263 

I., 20 196 

I. THESSALONIANS. 

II., 15, 16 185 

IV., 13-15 255 

V., 2 189 

V., 3 188, 208 

II. THESSALONIANS. 

I , 9 128, 187, 189, 238 

L, 8 106 

I. TIMOTHY. 

IL, 1-6 197 

IV., 10 197 

II. TIMOTHY. 

IV., 1 156, 185 

TITUS. 

IL, 11-14 197 



HEBREWS. 

II. , 14 20, 109 

V., 7 Ill 

VI.,8 199 

IX., 27 139 

X., 27 198 

X., 30 35, 186 

X , 31 35, 198 

XL, 30-32 186 

XII ,23 194 

•XII. , 29 14, 35, 186, 198, 249 

JAMES. 

I., 15 200 

L, 18 194 

III., 6 102 

V., 9 * 202 

I. PETER. 

jj t 9 ....194 

III., 19-2L.\V.'.V.\\\'r.!!!!.156 , ,'l57|'203 

IV., 5 156 

IV., 6 156,157, 204 

IV, 17 156 

V. 8 202 

V., 17 202 

II. PETER. 

IL. 3 206 

II.,4 207 

IL, 9 139, 207, 209 

II., 17 206 

III 165,207,210 

III., 7 208, 209 

I. JOHN. 

L, 1,2 106 

II., 2 213 

III, 4 248 

III., 15 ...213 

IV., 8-10 264 

IV., 10 135 

IV ,17 208 

V, 10-12 12,218 

JUDE. 

Verse 6 210, 211 



282 



Index of Scripture Texts. 



Verse 7 67, 162, 208 

Verse 14 211 

REVELATION. 

II., 23 216 

III., 5-16 216 

V., 13 - 109 

VI., 8 217 

VI., 12-17 217 

VIII 217 

VIII.,16 55 

XI., 18 162, 219 

XIII. , 8 161 



XIV., 6-11 219 

XV. 3 3, 4 11. 20, 146 

XIX., 20 i 222 

XIX., 21 , 220 

XX., 5 160, 255 

XX., 9 161 

XX., 10 222 

XX., 11-14.. .109, 114, 148, 158, 

223, 226, 236 

XXI., 4 61, 109, 225 

Xxl.,8 223 

XXII., 3 113, 225 

XXII., 15 223 



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